I  UN  22  191  fi 


THIS  LIFE  AND  THE  NEXT 


^^^^ 

THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

K»W  YORK  •    BOSTON   •    CHICAGO  •    DALLAS 
ATLANTA   •    SAN   FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  Limited 

LONDON  •    BOMBAY  •    CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  Ltd. 

TORONTO 


THIS   LIFE 
AND  THE  NEXT 

The  Effect  on  This  Life  ._^ 

of  Faith  in  Another:^^'^'*^^^i 

lUN  22  191 
p.  T.  FORSYTH,  M.A.,  D.D. 

Principal  of  Hackney  College,  Hampstead,  and 

Dean  of  the  Faculty  of  Theology  in 

the  University  of  London 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 
1918 


A.U  rights  reaervedt 


COPTBIGHT,    1918 

By  p.  T.  FORSYTH 


Set  up  and  electro  typed.     Published,    May,    1918 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I    Is  Life  the  more  Great  or  Dear  as 

IT  IS  Brief  ? i 

George  Eliot's  "  Jubal."  The  effect  of 
\  life's  brevity  on  its  value.  Death  good  for 
life  only  as  it  promises  life  beyond.  The 
moral  action  of  immortality  on  life  due  to 
the  enhanced  value  of  personality. 

II    The  Egoism  of  Immortality   .     .     .15 

The  egoism  of  Christ.  The  fear  of  pun- 
ishment and  the  hope  of  heaven.  Demor- 
alization possible.  But  my  neighbor's  im- 
mortality. The  w^orth  of  our  immortality 
to  God.  The  egoism  of  the  anti-egoists. 
Immoral  immortality. 

Ill    The  Egoism  of  God 27 

The  immortals  not  an  elite.  The  egoism 
of  God  is  the  blessing  of  the  world.  The 
moral  paradox  and  miracle  of  holy  love. 


CONTENTS 

:H  AFTER  PAGE 

IV     De  Mortuis 35 

The  egoism  of  the  will  to  live  is  qualified 
by  the  suicides  and  the  martyrs.  Demor- 
alizing sacrifice.  Falso  consolations  and 
true.     Prayer  for  the  dead. 

V    The  Practice  of  Eternity  and  the 

Experience  of  Life 47 

The  moral  psychology  of  the  saints.  The 
change  wrought  by  age  on  the  soul's  direc- 
tion. But  also  in  the  soul's  interests.  The 
efEect  on  life  of  the  antepast  of  Eternity. 

VI     Immortality  as  Present  Judgment    54 

It  is  a  vocation  rather  than  a  problem. 
Life  is  another  thing  if  we  confuse  these. 
Immortality  is  a  destiny  rather  than  a  rid- 
dle. Live  immortally.  Choose;  do  not 
argue.  To  live  for  Eternity  is  much,  but 
to  live  Eternity  is  more. 

VII     Eternity  within  Time,  Time  with- 
in Eternity 61 

The  other  life  then  is  the  other  life  now. 
The  timeless  in  Time.  Time's  Sacrament. 
We  are  Eternal  each  moment.  Eternity 
and  progress. 

vi 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

VIII    Life  a  Sacrament  ......     74 

Time  sacramental  of  Eternity.  How  part 
and  lot  in  the  Eternal  raises  the  common 
tasks  and  tragedies  of  life  beyond  the 
sordid. 

IX    Immortality  and  the  Kingdom  of 

God 80 

\  Absence  from  able  publicists  of  either  idea. 
But  the  only  perfection  is  in  a  common 
realm  and  a  common  King. 


\ 


\ 


X    Immortality  and  Redemption    .     .     92 

The  theology  of  it  and  the  psychology. 
The  ethic  of  it.  The  holy  the  guarantee 
of  the  eternal.  The  difference  of  faith 
and  experience. 

XI    Eternity  and  New  Birth    ...     99 

Does  the  great  change  refurbish  or  regen- 
erate? Do  we  need  more  a  fuller  life  or 
an  altered?  Immortality  is  the  continu- 
ance less  of  the  soul  than  of  its  change. 
Meaning  of  the  new  creation.  Not  an 
annexe,  nor  a  surrogate,  but  a  reconcilia- 
tion of  the  soul.  The  idea  of  Resurrec- 
tion as  the  nexus  of  that  life  and  this, 
vii 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

XII    The  Fructification  OF  Failure     .   112 

<.  The  future  is  the  fruition  of  failure  here. 
Eternity  holds  the  key  of  history,  the 
meaning  of  progress,  the  interest  of  tears. 
All  opens  out  in  that  light.  The  pathos  of 
the  past. 

XIII     L'Envoi 117 

^     To  live  is  Christ,  to  die  is  more  Christ. 
We  pass  into  a  genial  native  land. 


THIS  LIFE  AND  THE  NEXT 

CHAPTER  I 

IS  LIFE  THE  MORE  GREAT  OR  DEAR  AS  IT 
IS  BRIEF? 

George  Eliot's  "Jubal."  The  effect  of  life's  brevity  on 
its  value.  Death  good  for  life  only  as  it  promises  life 
beyond.  The  moral  action  of  immortality  on  life 
due  to  the  enhanced  value  of  personality. 

I  AM  not  proposing  to  speak  about  the 
grounds  in  this  life  of  a  belief  in  another,  but 
about  the  reaction  of  that  belief  upon  this 
life.  It  is  not  a  question  about  the  basis  of 
a  belief  in  immortality,  but  about  its  moral 
rebound.  We  often  hear  from  pulpits  of 
the  effect  of  this  life  on  the  next;  but  this  is 
not  a  pulpit,  and  what  we  are  now  to  dwell 
on  is  rather  the  reaction  of  the  next  life  on 
this.  Sometimes  we  are  bidden  to  turn  from 
considering  what  we  do  for  posterity  to  real- 
ize what  posterity  does  for  us  —  which  is 
much.  Mr.  Benjamin  Kidd  lectured  in  1906 
at  the  Royal  Institution  on  this  subject,  ''  The 
significance  of  the  Future  in  the  theory  of 
organic  evolution."  Well,  it  is  great.  But 
the  future  has  a  greater  significance  still  for 


THIS  LIFE  AND  THE  NEXT     chap. 

our  spiritual  evolution.  Posterity  does  much 
for  our  souls.  We  are  to  think,  then,  of 
the  reflex  action  on  us  of  the  idea  of  immor- 
tality, or,  in  a  more  Christian  way,  the  power 
over  us  of  an  endless  life  in  Christ,  where  the 
gain  in  dying  is  but  more  of  our  career  in 
Christ.  If  to  live  is  Christ,  to  die  is  more 
Christ. 

May  I  be  personal  and  reminiscent?  The 
formative  part  of  my  life  was  spent  in  a 
world  ruled  by  the  giants  of  the  Victorian 
days,  of  whom  one  of  the  most  potent  was 
George  Eliot.  And  I  can  well  remember 
when  her  poem,  "  The  Legend  of  Jubal," 
came  out  in  Macmillan^s  Magazine.  I  was 
a  student  in  an  ancient  university  in  a  far 
northern  city.  A  few  of  us  seized  the  maga- 
zine as  soon  as  it  could  be  bought,  and  took 
it  out  for  consumption  one  morning  by  the 
banks  of  the  highland  river  that  there  ends 
in  the  North  Sea  its  passionate  yet  pensive 
life.  George  Eliot  was  not  at  her  best  as  a 
poet,  and  I  do  not  think  that  "  Jubal  "  is  as 
much  read  now  as  her  lyric  with  the  same  mo- 
tive, which  probably  will  live  in  the  antholo- 
gies, 

"  O  may  I  join  the  Choir  Invisible, 
Of  those  immortal  dead  who  live  again 
In  souls  made  better  by  their  presence,  etc." 

2 


I         LIFE'S  BREVITY:  ITS  VALUE 

But  "  Jubal  "  was  more  dramatic,  more  pic- 
turesque, and  at  the  same  time  more  philo- 
sophic, which  appealed  to  us  as  we  then  were. 
It  had  a  story,  and  it  had  reflection.  And 
one  passage  that  impressed  myself  deeply 
that  morning  was  the  lines  describing  the  ten- 
der value  given  to  life  by  the  new  sense  of  its 
mortality.  i\ccording  to  this  legend,  death 
had  never  entered  the  world  till  an  accident 
brought  it.  As  the  finality  of  the  sleep  came 
home  to  the  race,  its  effect  was  revolutionary. 
And  the  nature  of  the  effect  was  more  fever- 
ish energy,  and  an  affection  tender  because 
brief. 

*'  And  a  new  spirit  from  that  time  came  o'er 
The  race  of  Cain;  soft  idlesse  was  no  more, 
But  even  the  sunshine  had  a  heart  of  care, 
Smiling  with  hidden  dread  —  a  mother  fair 
Who,  folding  to  her  heart  a  dying  child. 
Beams  with  feigned  joy  that  but  makes  sadness 

mild. 
Death  now  was  lord  of  life,  and  at  his  word 
Time,  vague  as  air  before,  new  terrors  stirred, 
With  measured  wing  now  audibly  arose. 
Thrilling  through  all  things  to  some  unknown 

close. 
Now  glad  content  by  clutching  haste  was  torn, 
And  work  grew  eager,  and  device  was  born. 

It  seemed  the  light  was  never  loved  before. 
Now  each  man  said,  '  I  will  go  and  come  no 
more.' 

3 


THIS  LIFE  AND  THE  NEXT     chap. 

No  budding  branch,  no  pebble  from  the  brook, 
No  form,  no  shadow,  but  new  dearness  took 
From  the  one  thought  that  life  must  have  an  end. 
And  the  last  parting  now  began  to  send 
Diffusive  dread  through  love  and  wedded  bliss, 
Thrilling  them  into  finer  tenderness. 

Thus  to  Cain's  race  death  was  tear-watered  seed 
Of  various  life,  and  action-shaping  need." 

Now,  who  does  not  feel  the  touching  truth 
in  this  ?  Who  has  not  clung  with  new  tender- 
ness to  the  dear  one  whose  days  are  num- 
bered? How  many  have  recognized  their 
angels  only  as  they  were  leaving  them?  Even 
in  health  who  has  not  stayed  the  impatient 
word,  at  the  remembrance  that  the  time  to- 
gether is  at  most  so  short,  and  might  be  short- 
ened to  an  hour?  Who  has  not  felt  a  new 
fascination  in  the  world's  beauty  as  our  lease 
of  it  runs  out,  even  if  we  have  had  many  fits 
of  disillusion  about  it? 

But  what  if  this  became  our  general  atti- 
tude to  the  world!  If  the  ruling  feeling  of 
society  were  that  of  brief  life,  sure  sorrow, 
and  eternal  loss!  If  this  feeling  became  a 
social  principle !  If  we  all  lived  in  the  con- 
viction that  death  ended  all,  and  was  no  new 
departure!  What  would  the  effect  of  that 
be  ?  Would  it  not  be  like  that  of  alcohol  — 
first  bustle  then  blight,  excitement  and  then 
stupidity.  If  we  only  looked  forward  to 
Jubal's  goal,  to  immersion  in  the  All  — 
4 


I         LIFE'S  BREVITY:  ITS  VALUE 

"  Quitting  mortality,  a  quenched  sun  wave, 
The  all  creating  presence  was  his  grave." 

would  there  be  much  creative  vigor  left  in 
life  under  that  doom  ? 

A  far  greater  poem  on  immortality  came 
from  the  Victorians  than  George  Eliot's. 
There  was  "  In  Memoriam."  And  we  can 
call  it  great  whatever  critical  reserves  we  may 
have  about  certain  aspects  of  that  spiritual 
achievement  to-day.  It  is  a  poem  that  ought 
to  be  read  and  studied  to-day  more  than  ever 
before.  Our  preachers  of  comfort  and  hope 
should  make  much  of  it,  and,  even  if  they 
quote  little,  draw  much  from  it,  while  they 
add  something.  It  is  better  and  holier  than 
ghosts  for  the  comfort  and  making  of  the 
soul.  Well,  there  is  a  line  in  it  which  is  very 
true  to  the  psychology  of  sorrow.  Unless 
we  can  be  sure  of  love's  immortality,  Tenny- 
son says,  a  bhght  would  come  on  love,  it 
would  be 

"  Half  dead  to  know  that  It  could  die." 

So  it  would  be.  It  would  take  the  energy 
out  of  us,  and  the  zest,  if  we  came,  habitually 
and  collectively,  to  believe  that  death  ended 
all,  and  that  we  only  survived  in  our  life's 
resultant  among  men,  and  not  In  Its  person- 
ality with  God. 

5 


THIS  LIFE  AND  THE  NEXT    chap. 

We  might  grant  that  death  teaches  us  much 
as  to  the  value  of  life,  and  that  life  without 
death  would  become  a  very  hard  and  coarse 
thing.  With  the  abolition  of  death  would 
vanish  the  uncertainty  which  educates  faith, 
the  mystery,  the  tragedy,  which  makes  life 
so  great,  the  sense  of  another  world  which 
gives  such  dignity  and  meaning  to  this,  the 
range  of  sympathy  that  flows  from  believing 
that  our  affections  are  not  for  this  world 
alone.  Erase  death,  and  TIthonus  tells  us 
life  sinks  at  last  into  drab  weariness.  Its 
noblest,  dearest  interest  ebbs  and  fades.  Its 
tragedy  and  its  chivalry  both  go.  We  should 
end  by  having  no  concern  but  feeding, 
drowsing,  prancing  and  feeding  again. 
Love,  valor,  pity,  sacrifice;  charm,  music  and 
all  the  nameless  spell  of  nature  and  of  per- 
sonality; courtesy  and  reverence,  all  the  sweet 
fine  things  of  life  that  are  tributes  to  soul, 
and  that  death  seems  to  cut  short  most  pain- 
fully —  those  are  the  things  which  would 
really  die  out  if  we  succeeded  in  indefinitely 
averting  death. 

But,  of  course,  it  is  not  death  that  preserves 
these  after  all.  It  Is  the  conviction  that  death 
is  a  crisis  which  opens  a  new  phase  of  life. 
It  Is  the  conviction,  latent  or  patent,  of  im- 
mortality and  spiritual  growth  In  it.  How 
much  more  true  Is  St.  Paul:  *'  Wherefore  my 
beloved  brethren  be  ye  steadfast,  immovable, 
6 


I         LIFE'S  BREVITY:  ITS  VALUE 

eveo*  abounding  In  the  work  of  the  Lord,  for 
as  much  as  ye  know  that  your  labor  is  not  In 
vain  in  the  Lord."  The  work  is  the  Lord's. 
It  is  there  not  simply  to  meet  man's  need, 
but  God's  purpose.  That  purpose  is  a 
greater  action-shaping  power  than  our  need 
is.  It  is  not  true  to  suggest,  as  this  poem 
does,  that  death,  understood  as  final,  could 
have  set  afoot  the  new  feature  of  energy  or 
desire,  the  eagerness  of  work,  the  strength  of 
society,  or  the  tenderness  of  affection.  For 
men  were  already  living  in  a  city,  "  The  City 
of  Cain,"  before  the  accident  took  place  or 
the  stimulus  of  death  came  In.  The  enter- 
prise of  civilization  had  started  well  on  its 
way.  Did  It  need  an  accidental  death  to  stir 
in  the  children  of  the  first  murderer  the  ter- 
rors that  made  life  tragic,  intense,  and  pa- 
thetic? It  Is  not  the  poverty  and  brevity  of 
life  that  draws  out  its  resources;  it  is  its  sense 
of  fullness  and  power.  It  is  strength  that  is 
the  root  of  action,  not  need.  "  Action-shap- 
ing need,"  yes,  but  not  action-creating.  Ac- 
tion shaping!  Yes,  but  what  inspires  action 
—  moral  action  as  distinct  from  mere  energy, 
mere  movement  ?  What  makes  the  good  will 
which  attends  at  all  to  the  needs  of  others  and 
does  not  just  feed  our  own?  A  stream  Is  not 
effective  which  just  spreads  out  and  flows  into 
each  hole  It  finds.  It  dies  of  diversion. 
That  phrase  was  a  piece  of  eggshell  which 
7 


THIS  LIFE  AND  THE  NEXT    chap. 

clung  to  George  Eliot  from  the  hatching  of 
her  mind  by  George  Henry  Lewes,  as  any  one 
may  see  who  reads  his  now  forgotten  books. 
Need  may  shape  action,  but  it  does  not  create 
action;  which  is  the  child  of  wealth  not  pov- 
erty, of  the  soul's  fullness  and  not  of  its 
death.  We  were  created  by  God  not  out  of 
his  poverty  and  his  need  of  company,  but  out 
of  his  overflowing  wealth  of  love  and  his 
passion  to  multiply  joy. 

The  passage  is  fine  poetry;  It  is  true  to  cer- 
tain phases  of  experience,  but  it  is  a  pathetic 
fallacy  all  the  same.  It  partakes  of  that  very 
sentimentalism  in  religion  which  the  author's 
school  unduly  despised, —  and  succumbed  to. 
Sentiment  has  Its  dear  place,  but  it  is  demoral- 
izing to  construe  life  by  the  sentiment  of  its 
phases  Instead  of  the  revelation  in  Its  con- 
science. Love  Is  not  fondness.  Sentiment  is 
not  life.  Sentimentalism  Is  not  cherishing 
sentiment  but  living  by  It,  at  the  cost  of  moral 
realities.  Like  art,  it  Is  life's  friend,  but  not 
Its  guide.  And  It  is  the  peculiar  peril  of  a 
religion  of  love  which  Is  not  understood  as 
holy  love. 

Of  course  It  would  be  unfair  to  say  that 
with  the  decay  of  a  belief  In  Immortality 
morality  would  straightway  cease.  At  least 
that  would  be  putting  It  too  bluntly.  All 
morality  would  not  cease.  The  nobler  souls 
8 


I         LIFE'S  BREVITY:  ITS  VALUE 

would  still  for  a  time  find  goodness  good. 
And  the  rest  would  find  incumbent  on  them 
a  utilitarian  ethic  in  the  interest  of  the  society 
of  which  they  were  a  part.  For  a  long  time 
at  least  this  would  be  so.  But  all  the  time 
there  would  be  question  whether  a  utilitarian 
ethic  is  really  moral,  whether  you  find  your 
moral  soul  in  it  or  not. 

This  finding  of  the  soul  raises  an  issue  more 
direct  and  just.  Would  moral  vigor,  cour- 
age, enterprise,  civilization  continue  to  rise 
and  progress  under  the  condition  supposed? 
Would  the  disbelief  in  immortality  lead  in  the 
end  to  the  finding  of  the  soul  or  the  losing  of 
it?  Would  it  lead  to  the  gain  of  the  public 
morale  or  its  loss?  For  I  mean  the  phrase 
less  in  the  theological  sense  than  the  socio- 
logical. Even  if  the  disbelief  in  our  souFs 
future  did  not  arrest  morality,  would  It  not 
lead  to  a  lowered  sense  of  that  which  is  be- 
hind morality  and  is  the  condition  of  it  — 
the  value  of  personality?  And  would  that 
not  in  the  end  produce  the  same  effect  as  the 
relaxation  of  moral  sanctions  —  especially  on 
society?  Public  morality  would  sink  to  class 
egoism  or  national  patriotism,  and  finally  It 
would  be  abjured.  The  moral  value  of  the 
Individual  would  sink  —  as  it  has  done  In  Ger- 
many, for  Instance,  where  there  Is  no  general 
belief  in  Immortality,  and  where  the  individ- 
ual withers  and  the  State  Is  more  and  more. 


THIS  LIFE  AND  THE  NEXT     chap. 

And  this  means  the  corruption  of  the  State 
itself,  which  ceases  to  be  a  moral  entity,  and 
becomes  the  prey  of  the  militarist  gamblers 
in  power.  The  people  would  be  brutalized. 
The  citizen  would  really  cease  to  be  a  citizen. 
The  free  elector  would  disappear  and  become 
Kanonen-f utter  fed  up  to  the  guns.  Under 
such  a  creed  the  vital  natural  man  would  cease 
to  concern  himself  with  posterity;  therefore 
he  would  slacken  in  public  concern.  His  in- 
terests would  be  but  egoist,  and  his  activity 
but  for  the  order  of  the  day.  He  would  say 
of  everything,  "  it  will  last  my  time."  His 
policy  would  be  from  hand  to  mouth,  with  a 
growing  tendency  to  the  mouth  and  its  egoism. 
The  shortening  of  the  soul's  career  would 
lead  to  the  impoverishment  of  its  interests. 
It  would  be  emptied  and  not  merely  curtailed. 
Pantheism  or  Positivism,  of  course,  does 
not  think  so.  It  says  that  each  moment  left 
would  receive  an  increase  of  value,  like  the 
Sibylline  books.  If  you  reduce  the  supply 
you  increase  the  price  of  life.  Well,  that 
looks  plausible  if  you  treat  moral  realities  and 
moral  issues  commercially,  if  you  regulate  the 
soul  by  economics,  or  politics  by  mere  pru- 
dence. But  that  course  has  been  a  failure. 
We  are  now  on  the  other  tack.  We  try  to 
regulate  economics  by  the  soul,  wages  by  the 
standard  of  living,  profits  with  a  prime  regard 
to  wage.     The  soul  does  not  work  by  the  law 

lO 


I         LIFE'S  BREVITY:  ITS  VALUE 

of  supply  and  demand.  You  do  not  increase 
the  value  of  mankind  by  decimation.  To  re- 
duce population  is  not  the  way  to  a  vigorous 
and  lasting  community.  Nor  is  it  so  if  we 
reduce  the  content  of  each  life  by  stopping 
it  at  a  point.  On  the  contrary  each  person 
would  then  drop  to  pursue  the  line  of  least 
resistance.  If  I  am  to  die  in  six  months  I 
won't  get  new  clothes.  If  I  must  get  them, 
shoddy  will  do.  A  jerry  built  house  will 
serve  me;  and  the  children  can  move  to  a 
new  one  when  this  begins  to  crack.  Burdens 
would  be  thrown  on  the  aftercomers.  Those 
upon-  whom  the  end  of  the  world  should 
come  would  be  crushed  under  the  silt  of  the 
obligations  left  to  them  before  it  arrived. 
Neglect  would  not  be  felt  to  be  crirninal. 
Whereas  the  sense  that  each  moment  is  of 
value  for  an  eternal  life  is  like  the  soul's 
sense  that  it  is  not  its  own  but  is  the  subject 
and  property  of  Christ — it  raises  the.soul's 
sense  of  dignity,  and  therefore  raises  also 
its  inner  wealth  and  energy.  The  things  it 
does  are  worth  while.  And  it  will  matter 
to  us  a  hundred  years  hence  what  we  do  to- 
day or  omit.  If  there  were  no  other  consid- 
eration, there  would  be  this.  If  I  am  to  be 
extinguished  at  seventy  I  need  not  be  too 
much  concerned  about  my  soul's  perfection, 
to  say  nothing  of  becoming  perfect  as  God  is. 
And  that  is  the  end  of  moral  effort  in  due 
II 


THIS  LIFE  AND  THE  NEXT     chap. 

course.  The  pursuit  of  perfection  is  a 
greater  moral  influence  than  the  passion  for 
power. 

The  finality  of  death  in  the  vital  sense 
leads  to  all  the  low  temperatures  in  life 
which  I  have  been  describing.  Its  finality  in 
the  moral  sense  leads  to  all  the  enormities 
which  we  associate  with  the  doctrine  of 
double  predestination. 

Clearly  in  this  life  some  are  better  off  than 
others,  and  some  are  morally  better.  That 
means,  if  there  be  a  ruling  power  in  human 
affairs,  a  doctrine  of  election  in  one  sense  or 
another.  Now,  to  a  doctrine  of  election  we 
do  not  need  to  object.  Aimer  c^est  choisir. 
Love  is  preferential.  But  two  things  we 
must  insist  on.  First,  it  is  not  an  election  to 
prerogative,  privilege,  and  exemption,  but 
to  God's  own  responsibility,  service,  and  sac- 
rifice. The  Captain  of  the  elect  came  to 
serve.  For  it  is  an  election  of  love.  On 
that  the  Gospel  is  clear.  And  second,  it  is 
the  action  of  a  moral  process  that  goes  on 
after  death.  The  fate  of  the  soul  is  not 
finally  determined  then.  Those  lives  and 
those  generations  which  were  elect  here  were 
chosen  for  the  service  and  good  of  those 
whose  turn  was  not  to  come  in  this  life.  Ed- 
ucation, or  experience,  which  begins  in  this 
life  does  not  fructify  in  certain  cases  till  an- 

12 


I         LIFE'S  BREVITY:  ITS  VALUE 

other.  An  election  to  a  certain  place  in  this 
life  does  not  mean  that  we  are  condemned 
to  that  place  for  ever.  Death  does  not  fix 
the  moral  position  of  the  soul  irretrievably. 
Other  methods  of  moral  discipline  lie  be- 
yond. We  cannot  be  occupied  there  with  the 
sordid  trivialities  which  engage  so  much  of 
our  time  here.  That  is  to  say,  we  are  not 
predestined  for  ever  to  the  place  or  state 
in  which  we  die.  Does  that  not  take^  the 
sting  out  of  a  doctrine  of  predestination? 
We  are  all  predestined  in  love  to  life  sooner 
or  later,  /'/  we  will.  An  election  is  to  certain 
stages  and  methods  of  endless  growth.  It 
Is  selection  for  cycles  and  crises  of  moral 
evolution.  It  is  not  that  some  are  chosen  for 
eternal  life  and  some  are  doomed  to  eternal 
death.  That  was  a  nightmare  which  grew 
from  the  association  of  the  truth  of  election 
with  the  falsehood  of  death's  finality.  And 
Its  tendency  is  to  reduce  the  value  of  the  soul, 
like  the  notion  that  death  is  final  in  the  sense 
of  extinction.  It  is  a  doctrine  which  for  the 
popular  mind  has  blighted  the  great  name  of 
Calvin,  and  prevented  us  from  realizing  him 
as  one  of  the  very  greatest  makers  of  his- 
tory, and  the  creator  through  Puritanism  of 
modern  democracy.  Calvin  only  applied 
consistently  that  idea  of  death's  finality  which 
all  Protestants  held.  Take  his  doctrine  of 
election,  relieve  it  of  the  notion  of  death's 
13 


THIS  LIFE  AND  THE  NEXT 

absolute  arrest,  and  you  have  a  great  pan- 
orama of  development  which  makes  this  life 
organic,  with  all  the  possibilities  of  an  endless 
growth  beyond.  It  is  the  abuse  of  Calvin- 
ism, as  it  is  the  abuse  of  purgatory,  that  has 
done  the  mischief.  So  we  discard  the  ex- 
treme of  orthodoxy  as  we  do  the  extreme  of 
negation  about  the  finality  of  death.  And 
we  realize  the  immense  effect  on  this  life  and 
the  use  of  it  from  the  faith  of  another  life, 
which  is  the  continued  action  of  the  Kingdom 
of  God  and  the  discipline  of  the  moral  soul. 
But  why  did  predestination,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  not  lower  personality?  Why  was  it  the 
religion  of  the  strongest  men  of  the  day  and 
for  long  after  —  the  makers  of  history? 
Why  did  It  not  act  like  Fatalism  In  Islam? 
Because  it  was  the  action  not  of  a  Fate  but 
of  a  living  God  and  a  free  God  of  Grace, 
however  distorted  the  conception  of  His 
mode  of  action.  The  greatness  of  God's 
free  and  holy  sovereignty  overbore  the  weak- 
ness of  the  rest  of  the  creed.  He  was  a  liv- 
ing God  and  a  free,  and  not  a  force,  a  pro- 
cess, or  a  fate.  And  the  history  of  Calvin- 
ism shows  that  a  supreme  concern  for  God's 
freedom  Is  the  best  motive  and  guarantee 
for  man's. 


14 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  EGOISM  OF  IMMORTALITY 

The  egoism  of  Christ.  The  fear  of  punishment  and  the 
hope  of  heaven.  Demoralization  possible.  But  my 
neighbor's  immortality.  The  worth  of  our  mortal- 
ity to  God.  The  egoism  of  the  anti-egoists.  Im- 
moral immortality. 

The  belief  in  immortality  has  been  charged 
with  egoism.  But  there  Is  egoism  and 
egoism.  And  In  Christ  Himself  there  Is  a 
unique  combination  of  self-sacrifice  and  self- 
assertion. 

In  what  sense  can  we  say  there  was  an 
egoism  In  Jesus?  "  Eternal  life  Is  to  believe 
in  Me,"  "  Because  I  live  ye  shall  live  also," 
"  I  shall  judge  the  world,"  ^'  Inasmuch  as  ye 
did  it  to  these  ye  did  It  to  me."  These,  with 
many  similar  claims,  Indicate  what.  In  a  mere 
man,  would  be  egoism  carried  even  to  im- 
perial megalomania.  Yet  It  does  not  offend 
us.  It  offends  us  no  more  than  the  egoism 
of  God  —  who  Is  a  sole  and  jealous  God  — 
or  love's  egoism  with  its  monogamy  (the  so- 
cial counterpart  of  monotheism)  and  its  ex- 
clusive right.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  ego- 
ism of  Christ  is  in  the  same  category  as  the 
15 


THIS  LIFE  AND  THE  NEXT     chap. 

absoluteness  of  God;  and  such  egoism  In  God 
is  the  blessing  of  the  world.  It  is  its  moral 
stability.  It  is  its  holiness.  To  worship  it 
is  not  to  be  infected  with  egoism,  but  to  lose 
it.  To  glorify  God  is  to  find  our  soul,  which 
is  lost  in  its  own  pursuit.  It  is  not  egoism  to 
court  an  immortality  which  is  the  communion 
and  obedience  of  His  absolute  life. 

It  might,  of  course,  be  said  that  we  should 
not  speak  of  an  egoism  in  God,  and  that  we 
had  better  betake  ourselves  to  a  less  familiar 
but  more  fitting  word,  and  speak  of  His 
Egoity.  But  that  hardly  meets  the  case  if  by 
the  new  term  we  think  to  avoid  the  idea  that 
God  seeks  His  own.  He  does  seek  His 
own,  since  He  can  seek  no  higher.  Like  us, 
He  must  seek  the  highest.  Could  He  devote 
Himself  only  to  an  inferior?  His  grace  to 
us  is  a  debt  to  himself.  And  our  faith  is  a 
faith  that  nothing  is  well  with  us  until  we  are 
at  His  service  in  that  quest,  that  seeking  of 
His  own.  For  He  is  a  holy  God,  with  a  life 
self-determined  and  turned  In  on  Himself 
with  an  infinite  self-sufficiency,  just  as  surely 
as  He  is  a  God  of  love  with  a  life  outgoing. 
He  is  at  once  self-contained  and  communi- 
cative. Without  a  centripetal  force  the  heav- 
ens cannot  stand.  It  were  a  slack  piety,  and 
one  drawn  from  our  sentiment  more  than 
from  His  revelation,  to  treat  Him  as  one 
whose  whole  concern  is  to  give,  with  nothing 
i6 


n    THE  EGOISM  OF  IMMORTALITY 

In  His  energy  of  that  self-regard  which  makes 
a  character  worth  much  to  receive.  An 
effusive  God  cannot  be  a  holy  God,  and  such 
love  Is  not  divine.  It  Is  not  self-seeking, 
therefore,  to  cherish  an  Immortality  of  divine 
service.  Man's  true  self  Is  the  worship  of 
God's.     But  to  this  point  I  shall  return. 

I  do  not  mean  to  say  much  on  the  common 
theme  (however  valuable)  of  the  effect  on 
this  life  of  a  doctrine  of  retribution,  of  re- 
wards and  punishments,  In  another.  For 
this  Is  not  the  only  action  of  a  belief  in  im- 
mortality. And  some  might  say  It  was  not 
the  chief.  They  might  say  Its  chief  effect 
was  on  the  soul's  belief  in  Itself  and  its  dig- 
nity. They  would  question  the  worth  of 
goodness  done  for  a  reward.  Many  would 
ask  how  reward  consists  with  grace,  a  wage 
with  a  free  gift  —  deep  points  these  that  I 
do  not  stop  to  discuss  here.  As  to  punish- 
ment, they  might  also  go  on  to  say  that  the 
fear  of  it  has  been  more  debasing  than  the 
hope  of  reward;  because  people  as  they  grow 
worse  tend  to  think  more  about  punishment, 
while  as  they  grow  better  they  think  less  of 
reward.  The  reward  is  not  a  motive  with 
the  people  who  deserve  best,  but  the  punish- 
ment is  a  motive  with  the  people  who  deserve 
least.  And  In  a  religion  of  moral  redemp- 
tion a  doctrine  cannot  be  of  chief  value  if  it 
17 


THIS  LIFE  AND  THE  NEXT     chap. 

weigh  more  with  the  bad  than  with  the  good. 

Also,  I  will  do  little  more  than  mention  the 
effect  of  the  waning  belief  in  eternal  torment, 
both  upon  life  and  upon  some  public  matters 
like  capital  punishment,  or  war.  If  the  hang- 
man fixes  a  soul  in  a  certain  state  for  ever, 
I  do  not  see  how  any  crime  could  justify  any 
State  in  the  capital  sentence;  nor  do  I  see  how 
It  could  morally  go  to  war.  But  there  does 
follow  on  the  decay  of  this  belief  a  certain 
levity  about  death,  judgment,  and  the  soul. 
The  soul  is  taken  more  lightly  if  its  sin  is  no 
more  than  this  life  or  a  brief  purgatory  can 
deal  with.  The  whole  meaning  of  life  is 
lowered.  And  with  life's  reduced  value 
there  comes  a  reduced  sense  of  life's  sanctity 
and  public  order.  This  levity  of  doctrine 
has  gone  beyond  a  protest  against  the  eternity 
of  punishment,  and  has  led  to  dropping  the 
Idea  of  any  hell  or  judgment  at  all,  as  if  we 
could  cheat  judgment  by  dying.  And  so  it 
leads  to  the  loss  of  such  life-wisdom  as  be- 
gins in  fear,  and  rises  to  reverence  and  awe. 
It  is  all  part  of  the  loss  of  moral  tone  in  re- 
ligion through  the  general  abeyance  of  the 
sense  of  the  holy  and  of  sin. 

In  the  matter  of  reward.  It  Is  charged  by 
some  that  an  immortal  life,  as  it  involves  the 
infinite  expansion  of  the  self,  magnifies  our 


n    THE  EGOISM  OF  IMMORTALITY 

egoism,  makes  us  take  ourselves  too  seriously, 
and  thereby  tends  to  develop  an  anti-social 
frame  of  mind  which  cannot  bear  to  be  out 
of  anything  and  always  wants  the  front. 
The  criticism  itself  reflects  the  old  anti-so- 
cial individualism.  But  there  is  no  doubt 
that  some  forms  of  the  belief  do  have  the 
effect  named.  It  is  so  in  Islam,  which  is 
a  religion  of  conquest  rather  than  of  civil- 
ization. It  was  so  even  with  the  Moors 
in  Spain.  But  it  is  so  also  nearer  home. 
Germany  means  civilization,  but  by  racial  do- 
minion. If  the  doctrine  of  immortality  is 
held  only  on  subjective  grounds,  it  is  quite 
likely  to  end  in  religious  egoism.  It  is  a  fun- 
damental principle  of  all  I  say  on  the  subject 
that  a  sure  belief  in  immortality  does  not 
rest  where  philosophy  puts  it,  but  where  re- 
ligion puts  it.  It  is  not  founded  on  the  nature 
of  the  psychic  organism,  but  on  its  relation 
to  Another.  I  mean  that  if  it  is  based  on  the 
indestructible  nature  of  the  soul  substance,  or 
upon  an  untamed  passion  for  adventure,  or 
upon  endless  curiosity,  or  upon  our  instinct 
and  thirst  for  personal  perfection,  or  upon 
our  native  moral  greatness,  or  upon  any  such 
stoic  forms  of  self-esteem,  or  even  self-re- 
spect, it  is  quite  likely  (if  you  go  on  far 
enough  to  give  scope  for  its  gravitation)  to 
end  downward  in  a  supreme  care  for  my  im- 
mortality, whatever  becomes  of  yours.  And 
19 


THIS  LIFE  AND  THE  NEXT     chap. 

that  ends  In  people  elbowing  each  other  out 
of  the  way  to  get  at  the  elixir  of  life,  or  to 
dip  in  this  Bethesda  pool  for  eternity.  But 
these  are  philosophic  considerations,  or  aes- 
thetic or  egoistic  concerns,  which  are  not 
really  religious.  They  detach  man  from 
God,  the  Lord  and  Giver  of  Life.  At  least 
they  do  not  found  on  man's  union  with  God. 
They  set  him,  with  his  claims  and  presump- 
tions, over  against  God,  as  the  deadly  way  of 
Pharisaism  was.  Man  may  come  thus  to  be- 
have like  a  spoilt  beauty,  unschooled  in  duty, 
and  craving  for  attentions  without  end.  The 
Creator  may  even  be  reminded  that  He  has 
made  the  soul  immortal,  that  He  cannot  re- 
call the  initial  gift  of  life,  and  that  the  soul 
has  stamped  on  It  a  signed  concession  of  eter- 
nal rights.  All  that  is  egoist  enough,  or  can 
become  so.  And  I  do  not  remember  where 
we  have  Christian  warrant  for  believing  that 
man  was  created  immortal. 

But  the  case  Is  quite  altered  If  I  am  not 
thinking  chiefly  about  my  living  for  ever.  I 
rnay  be  thinking  of  some  dearer  to  me  than 
life,  for  whose  salvation  beyond  the  grave  I 
would  risk  my  own.  Or  I  may  be  thinking 
of  the  immortality  of  the  race;  which  is  a 
more  potent  Influence  on  the  present  than  a 
multitude  of  individual  immortalities,  be- 
cause the  efl^clency  of  an  organic  group  is 
20 


n    THE  EGOISM  OF  IMMORTALITY 

greater  than  the  sum  total  of  the  efficiencies 
of  its  units.  A  nation  is  great,  a  crowd  is 
not.  But  still  more  is  the  case  altered  if 
I  am  thinking  about  our  glorifying  God  for 
ever  whether  as  a  soul  or  as  a  race.  All  is 
different  if  I  am  thinking  about  what  my  soul 
means  for  others.  Most  of  all  when  I  am 
thinking  of  what  it  means  for  God  and  not 
of  what  it  means  for  me,  if  I  am  not  making 
Him  to  serve  my  egoism,  if  I  am  not  think- 
ing of  the  paradise  of  Heaven  but  of  the  pur- 
pose of  God  and  His  righteousness.  If  my 
immortality  is  due  to  God's  gift,  it  Is  due  to 
His  incessant  gift  and  creation,  and  not  to  an 
infinite  lease  of  life  which  He  signed  at  the 
beginning.  That  is  to  say,  It  can  go  on  only 
by  communion  with  Him.  But  that  Is  not 
the  communion  of  love  between  equals,  but  of 
grace  between  unequals.  And  whatever  we 
owe  to  God's  grace  glorifies  Him  far  more 
than  it  glorifies  us.  What  man  tends  to  say, 
whether  he  do  It  naively  or  philosophically, 
is,  "  Because  I  live  I  shall  live."  But  what 
Christ  says,  and  what  faith  hears  is,  "  Be- 
cause I  live  ye  shall  live  also."  He  alone  has 
life  in  Himself,  and  we  have  It  by  His  gift 
and  by  union  with  Him  either  here  or  here- 
after. It  makes  a  vast  difference  between 
the  philosophic  and  the  religious  treatment 
of  Immortality  when  we  remember  this  — 
that  in  the  Bible  the  supreme  interest  and  the 

21 


THIS  LIFE  AND  THE  NEXT     chap. 

final  ground  of  Immortality  was  not  the  con- 
tinuity of  an  organism,  physical  or  psychical, 
but  of  a  relation.  The  ground  of  the  belief 
was  not  that  such  an  organism  must  go  on, 
but  that  a  life  In  God,  and  especially  in  the 
risen  Christ,  could  not  die.  The  philosophic 
way  Is  egoist,  however  large  and  fine;  it  does 
justice  to  that  excellent  creature  man.  It  is 
anthropocentrlc.  The  other  way  (of  faith) 
is  concerned  with  God,  His  stake  in  us.  His 
purpose  with  us,  and  our  service  of  His  King- 
dom and  honor.     It  is  theocentric. 

If  this  were  a  mere  matter  of  debate  and 
we  wanted  to  make  a  point,  we  might,  of 
course,  remind  an  objector  that  if  there  is 
egoism  in  some  of  the  hopes  of  immortality, 
there  Is  egoism  In  many  of  the  results  of  its 
denial.  If  death  be  dissolution,  self  knows 
that  it  has  but  a  short  time,  and  must  make 
the  most  of  it.  And  there  is  no  power  to 
forbid  or  limit.  So  it  piles  gain  on  gain, 
power  on  power,  pleasure  on  pleasure, 
with  an  energy  that  nothing  abates  or  de- 
flects, and  with  a  deep  sense  of  the  resources 
of  money  to  neutralize  consequences,  still 
pain,  and  avert  death.  So  duty  easily  comes 
to  be  a  negligible  quantity.  And  the  man  is 
ruled  by  the  will  to  live  with  all  his  might 
the  little  span  on  which  he  may  count.     But 

22 


n    THE  EGOISM  OF  IMMORTALITY 

the  events  round  us  would  show,  if  nothing 
else  did,  that  such  brief  egoism  in  due  course 
reduces  the  value  and  power  of  each  ego 
even  to  enjoy.  It  reduces  the  value  of  moral 
personality,  and  society  sinks  to  worse  than 
death. 

But  It  is  not  here  a  mere  matter  of  debate 
and  of  making  points.  Let  it  be  owned  that 
in  cases  it  has  happened,  and  does  happen, 
that  the  passion  for  poring  on  a  future  life 
has  starved  the  passion  due  to  this  life,  and 
bleached  it  of  reality.  (Though,  to  tell  the 
truth,  I  wish  more  people  pored  on  these 
things  now.)  It  has  taken  the  monk  out  of 
his  helping  place  In  the  world  Into  a  hiding 
place;  and  It  has  put  him  Into  a  cellular  self, 
regardless  of  either  the  goods  or  the  duties 
of  this  life.  By  his  celibacy  it  robbed  the 
world  of  the  propagation  of  the  best  lives 
to  an  extent  only  equal  to  that  in  which  by 
this  war  we  have  lost  them.  But  the  hope 
that  produces  such  a  result  does  not  get  Its 
substance  from  positive  faith,  which  is  occu- 
pied with  Christ  and  not  with  our  future,  and 
with  a  Christ  who  had  much  sense  of  life's 
joy  and  zest.  The  dream  of  a  life  to  come 
can  be  used  only  to  pamper  the  self;  and  that 
means  to  empty  of  reality  the  life  that  now 
is.  It  Is  a  non-moral  faith;  for  if  social  duty 
be  unreal,  all  Is  unreal.     Our  real  and  great 

23 


THIS  LIFE  AND  THE  NEXT     chap. 

hope  Is  not  that  one  day  we  shall  die  to  the 
world,  but  that  this  day  we  live  to  others  and 
to  God. 

To  such  misled  people  as  I  have  named  the 
future  was  a  hope  that  starved  the  present. 
But  there  are  those  to  whom  it  is  a  fear, 
which  also  crushes  it.  The  dread  of  hell  is 
an  obsession  that  has  distorted  many  lives. 
But  that  again  has  been  because  their  future 
was  more  to  them  than  Christ  was,  and  they 
were  more  tied  in  self  than  freed  in  a  Savior. 
With  a  keen  conscience  and  a  vivid  imagina- 
tion, a  future  that  is  merely  life  prolonged 
and  not  reborn  may  well  become  filled  with 
fears  and  loaded  with  care.  But  in  Christ 
the  future  is  given  us  filled  with  a  regenerate 
power  and  glory,  where  fear  is  sanctified  into 
penitence  and  vigilance,  sorrow  glorifies  God 
and  becomes  service,  and  love  is  realized  in 
ready  obedience.  Our  total  ignorance  of  a 
future  which  faith  does  not  fill  with  Christ 
can  be  a  more  debasing  source  of  fear  than 
a  hell  which  we  know  serves  the  purposes  of 
God.  Without  Christ  and  the  love  of  Him, 
the  past  and  the  future  may  equally  loom 
upon  us,  and  beetle  over  our  present. 

And  not  upon  us  only.  We  are  unsure  and 
anxious  not  only  about  ourselves,  but  about 
the  loved  and  lost.  If  our  personal  outlook 
be  a  blank  we  can  perhaps  be  Stoics,  but  what 
of  them?  Is  it  any  comfort  to  our  love, 
24 


11    THE  EGOISM  OF  IMMORTALITY 

does  it  not  add  a  sting  to  death  and  put  a  slur 
on  love,  that  they  may  have  ceased  to  be? 
It  is  one  thing  to  commit  them  to  Christ,  who 
fills  (and  is)  our  future  and  theirs;  but  it  is 
another  thing  to  trust  to  Christ  neither  our- 
selves nor  them.  And  yet  to-day  there  are 
thousands  who  have  far  more  passion  to  see 
their  dead  than  to  know  Christ;  one  word 
from  a  revenant  were  worth  all  that  Christ 
has  said  or  could  say;  a  frame  of  mind  which 
not  only  disappoints  moral  hope,  but  leaves 
them  too  easy  victims  to  the  occult  and  all 
its  train.  It  is  neither  religion  nor  ethic,  but 
magic.  It  does  not  produce  religious  belief. 
"  If  they  believe  not  Moses  and  the  prophets, 
neither  would  they  believe  to  Christian  pur- 
pose if  one  rose  from  the  dead."  One  does 
not  like  to  seem  untender  to  the  bereaved, 
but  surely  it  is  a  poor  ending  to  high-minded 
people  when  they  find  in  West  End  mediums 
a  certainty  about  their  dear  ones  which  they 
had  renounced  in  Christ,  and  more  comfort 
in  the  ghosts'  banalities  than  in  the  power  or 
silence  of  Him.  It  is  always  an  unstable 
frame  of  mind  and  a  low  form  of  faith  to  be, 
even  in  the  name  of  love,  more  anxious  about 
immortality  than  about  being  in  Christ  or  in 
God's  Kingdom.  And  it  is  dangerous,  be- 
cause it  exposes  affection  to  the  advances  of 
magic,  the  variation  of  temperament,  and  the 
spell  of  the  occult  —  as  if  the  chief  secret 
25 


THIS  LIFE  AND  THE  NEXT 

of  life  were  in  the  preternatural  or  the  sub* 
liminal  and  not  in  a  moral  revelation.  But, 
on  the  other  hand,  we  can  so  view  the  other 
life  in  Christ,  and  so  care  for  the  righteous- 
ness of  His  endless  Kingdom  that  we  give  up 
the  dearest  souls  to  its  historic  service  with 
tears  of  such  noble  sorrow  as  the  mother 
weeps  in  sad  joy  when  she  sends  off  her 
daughter  as  a  bride. 


26 


CHAPTER  III 


THE  EGOISM  OF  GOD 


The  immortals  not  an  elite.  The  egoism  of  God  is  the 
blessing  of  the  world.  The  moral  paradox  and 
miracle  of  holy  love. 

I  KEEP  saying  that  our  immortality  is  not  so 
much  a  matter  of  our  psychical  structure,  but 
of  our  relation  to  God.  i\nd  not  to  God 
only,  but  also  to  our  fellows.  Let  us  think 
of  the  future  not  only  religiously,  as  God's 
gift  to  us,  but  ethically,  as  the  destiny  of 
others  rather  than  of  ourselves,  or  as  the 
destiny  of  our  whole  kind.  Its  issues  go  to 
the  horizon  of  the  whole  race.  If  the  future 
do  not  belong  to  them  all  as  it  does  to  us  we 
become  an  elite.  The  immortals  become  a 
caste.  They  exist,  not  in  grades  of  glory 
(which  we  may  well  think),  but  in  a  monop- 
oly of  prerogative.  Without  are  dogs.  If 
we  are  more  concerned  about  our  own  future 
than  about  that  of  our  kind  we  destroy  the 
Kingdom  of  God.  We  turn  moral  consid- 
erations out  of  the  large  action  of  history, 
and  we  cut  the  tap  root  of  the  unity  of  man- 
kind, which  at  the  last  lies  in  the  conscience 
27 


THIS  LIFE  AND  THE  NEXT     chap. 

and  its  salvation.  The  Christian  believes  in 
the  unity  of  man  only  because  he  believes  in 
the  righteousness  of  the  universal  Kingdom 
and  the  new  Humanity  in  Christ.  Also,  if 
we  are  more  concerned  about  a  future  com- 
pensation for  the  ills  and  losses  of  life  to 
ourselves  than  to  others,  we  soon  come  to 
treat  them  as  our  tools.  If  there  be  no  com- 
pensation, such  as  only  another  world  can 
give,  to  these  millions  of  sufferers,  all  silent 
but  for  a  Pleader  in  heaven,  and  unknown 
except  to  the  mercy  that  forgets  nothing  — 
if  there  be  no  compensation  to  these  dim  and 
common  populations  of  age  after  age,  that 
fact  reduces  their  whole  value,  and  therewith 
the  value  of  the  soul  everywhere.  And  with 
that  goes  the  concern  at  last  for  human  life 
or  suffering.  Men  come  to  seem  not  worth 
compensating.  God  has  not  cast  His  mantle 
over  their  mangled  corpses.  But  we  cannot 
so  leave  them.  If  they  do  not  ask,  we  must 
ask  for  them.  We  must  press  God  to  take 
order  for  them.  Otherwise  we  lose  respect, 
to  say  nothing  of  love,  for  them.  We  belong 
then  to  a  caste  and  not  to  mankind.  And  if 
the  caste  so  formed  be  a  coarsely  egoist,  if 
it  be  militarist,  caste,  with  a  dynastic  caste 
within  it;  and  if,  moreover,  the  belief  in  the 
soul  and  Its  destiny  die  out  in  that  land,  then 
the  lives  of  the  millions  are  but  food  for  the 
guns,  and  even  the  caste  Itself  becomes  the 
28 


ra  THE  EGOISM  OF  GOD 

vassal  of  the  dynasty.  And  the  whole  of 
Humanity  becomes  but  the  manure  in  which 
this  monopoly  grows. 

But  a  bold  spirit  may  go  further  and  say 
that  the  God  of  the  everlasting  Kingdom  is 
but  an  Egoist.  He  Is  a  dynast.  The  very 
unity  of  the  race  may  be  but  the  footstool  of 
His  throne.  If  His  object  In  our  eternal  life 
is  His  own  eternal  glory,  that  transfers  the 
egoism  to  Him.  It  makes  Him  the  Arch- 
Egoist,  the  Caesar  of  heaven.  And  how  can 
an  Egoist  worship  the  Arch-Egoist,  however 
much  he  might  envy  Him?  There  Is  a  kind 
of  thinking,  more  or  less  popular,  which  takes 
to  that  somewhat  crude  criticism  as  the  liberal 
way.  That  is  Its  form  of  protest  against 
the  domineering  sovereignty  of  God  in  the 
old  orthodoxy,  for  which  it  has  nothing  but 
protest  —  no  Interpretation.  The  Church 
in  preaching  a  holy  God,  a  jealous  God,  a 
sole  God,  Is  charged  with  preaching  an  egoist 
God;  and  the  Christian  course.  It  is  said,  must 
be  to  discard  Him  for  a  God  whose  holiness 
Is  only  purity,  and  whose  being  as  pure  love 
Is  wholly  spent  In  bestowing  Himself  on  His 
creation  without  a  thought  of  His  own  self 
or  dignity.  He  keeps  us  Immortal  for  our 
good,  and  He  Is  not  thinking  of  His  own 
sanctity  or  glory  at  all. 

But  this  Is  as  one-sided  as  orthodoxy  could 
29 


THIS  LIFE  AND  THE  NEXT     chap. 

ever  be,  and  for  moral  man  much  more  fatal. 
It  makes  God  but  the  servant  of  man,  the 
father  of  a  spoilt  child.  Man  picks  up  all 
the  egoism  such  a  God  discards.  The 
Christian  revelation  is  a  God  of  holy  love 
and  not  of  hearty  love  only;  but  this  ten- 
dency drops  the  holy  and  keeps  only  to  the 
love.  It  offers  us  a  God  of  dear  mother- 
hood and  not  holy  fatherhood.  It  has  taken 
this  swing  in  the  rebound  from  an  orthodoxy 
that  made  everything  of  God's  justice  and 
nothing  of  His  love.  But  if  we  cannot  hold 
both  sides  of  a  paradox  we  are  not  fit  for 
the  kingdom  of  heaven.  The  God  of  holy 
love  is  a  paradox.  He  Is  not  only  a  mys- 
tery; we  might  even  welcome  that  in  an  aes- 
thetic way.  But  He  is  an  aggressive  mys- 
tery; and  that  irritates  us.  He  combines  two 
things  which,  as  thoughts,  we  can  adjust  in 
no  theology;  but  we  can  grasp  them  by  a 
faith  of  their  reconcilement  in  a  person  with 
whom  we  have  to  do  —  a  moral  reconcile- 
ment, and  not  one  worked  out  by  the  process 
of  an  idea. 

Consider.  A  God  of  holy  love,  a  God 
whose  love  we  do  not  only  enjoy  but  worship, 
must  be  a  God  that  orbs  Into  a  perfect  sun  as 
well  as  sheds  His  goodly  rays.  He  must  be 
a  God  concentrated  as  much  as  a  God  com- 
municative; else  what  can  He  communicate? 
He  does  owe  something  to  that  closed  self 
30 


m  THE  EGOISM  OF  GOD 

which  blesses  all  to  their  fill.  Except  as  a 
real  self  He  cannot  bless.  He  would  have 
nothing  to  give.  His  self-revelation  would 
only  be  effusion.  But  His  transcendence  in 
the  Old  Testament  does  not  cease  in  His  Con- 
descendence in  the  New.  It  even  rises  to 
the  place  the  Holy  Spirit  takes  there  as  a  con- 
stituent of  God-head.  His  love  is  homeward 
bound  as  well  as  outward  bound.  If  it  go 
forth  always,  it  also  returns  incessantly  on 
Himself.  Systole  is  as  endless  as  diastole. 
And  the  synthesis  of  these  two  movements 
can  only  be  realized  in  the  energy  of  His 
living  person;  it  cannot  be  set  out  in  any 
rational  harmony.  It  involves  the  miracle 
of  personality  and  will.  That  the  holy 
should  ever  touch  the  sinful  Is  the  great  mira- 
cle of  moral  reality.  A  holy  God  is  more 
than  altruist.  His  holiness  Is  not  egoism. 
His  absolute  founds  every  relative,  and  does 
not  destroy  it. 

In  the  Bible,  things,  or  places,  or  people 
are  holy  which  are  set  apart  for  God;  God 
is  holy  as  He  Is  set  apart  for  Himself. 
Things  are  holy  as  they  are  for  God;  He  Is 
holy  as  He  is  for  Himself.  We  are  holy  as 
belonging  to  Him;  He  is  holy  as  belonging 
to  Himself,  as  absolute  possessor  of  Him- 
self, by  gift  of  none.  He  is  possessor  of 
Himself,  and  of  all  In  Him  that  houses  and 
blesses  us.  In  the  Father's  heart  are  many 
31 


THIS  LIFE  AND  THE  NEXT     chap. 

mansions.  For  the  creature  to  be  holy  is 
to  be  for  God;  for  God  Himself  to  be  holy  is 
to  be  God.  His  holiness  is  the  complete  ac- 
cord of  His  will  and  His  nature.  It  is  not 
an  attribute  of  God;  It  is  His  name,  and  be- 
ing, and  infinite  value.  But  if  the  holiness 
do  not  go  out  to  cover.  Imbue,  conquer,  and 
sanctify  all  things,  If  it  do  not  give  Itself  In 
love,  It  Is  the  less  holy.  It  Is  but  partial  and 
not  absolute.  As  holy  he  must  subdue  all 
and  bless  all.  God's  holiness  Is  the  funda- 
mental principle  not  of  our  worship  only, 
but  of  His  whole  saving  revelation  and  econ- 
omy of  love.  It  Is  the  moral  principle  of 
both  love  and  grace.  It  is  love's  content,  it 
is  what  lov^e  brings  or  grace  gives.  And  it 
IS  the  warrant  of  love's  eternity.  For  only 
the  holy  can  love  for  ever  and  for  ever  sub- 
due the  loveless ;  only  the  holy  can  thoroughly 
forgive  so  as  to  make  His  holiness  dear.  In 
God's  holiness  are  perfectly  balanced  the  two 
things  which  correspond  to  Egoism  and  Al- 
truism with  us.  They  are  warp  and  woof  of 
Him.  That  heaven  moves  in  the  harmony 
of  Its  centrifugal  and  Its  centripetal  powers. 
If  we  fasten  on  either  at  the  cost  of  the  other 
we  fly  from  our  orbit  and  come  to  grief. 
Luther  (but  half  de-cathollclzed)  seized  on 
the  love,  and  we  have  modern  Germany,  with 
Its  deadly  docility,  Its  soft  piety,  and  its  hard 
practice.  Calvin  (with  the  moral  thorough- 
32 


m  THE  EGOISM  OF  GOD 

ness  of  Redemption)  seized  by  preeminence 
on  the  holy,  with  a  seeming  hardness  which 
has  brought  the  freedom  and  security  of  the 
world.  The  two  had  coexisted  in  Catholi- 
cism In  a  naive  and  dormant  way;  and  they 
had  to  dispart  in  these  two  reformers  on  the 
way  to  a  synthesis  which  we  have  not  yet 
reached  in  practice,  but  which  the  great  Ca- 
tholicism of  the  future  must  see. 

The  egoism  of  the  absolute  God  is  not 
egoism.  It  makes  the  relativity  of  all.  It 
IS  not  selfishness  but  selfhood.  It  Is  the  se- 
curity of  blessing  for  all.  The  egoism  of 
God  is  the  blessing  of  the  world.  It  is  His 
possession  of  His  own  holy  soul.  If  He  did 
not  possess  His  soul  how  should  He  give  His 
spirit  to  us?  It  is  not  the  egoism  of  an  indi- 
vidual that  we  have  to  do  with,  but  the  uni- 
versal self-contalnedness,  self-constancy,  self- 
identity.  It  is  the  eternal  totality  (If  we 
speak  Latin)  or  the  holiness  (if  we  speak 
Saxon)  of  all  things  in  righteous  love.  It  is 
love's  power,  in  every  contact  with  creation, 
to  remain  itself,  assert  itself,  establish  Itself, 
and  always  come  home  to  itself,  bringing 
its  sheaves  in  our  souls.  It  is  the  absolute- 
ness and  eternity  of  the  moral  and  spiritual 
world,  the  security  and  certainty  of  the  con- 
quest, government,  and  uplifting  of  the 
Universe.  The  worship  of  the  absolute  self- 
hood of  the  holy  Lover  by  those  who  live  in 
33 


THIS  LIFE  AND  THE  NEXT 

Him  IS  the  source  In  us  of  permanent  power 
to  quell  our  egoism  In  the  sacrifices  of  love. 
Naturally  we  love  love  because  it  Is  lovely. 
Yet  It  might  be  helpless.  We  do  not  love 
spiritually  till  we  are  perfectly  sure  of  its  in- 
finite power.  And  that  lies  In  its  holiness. 
Because  It  Is  holy  it  is  almighty,  and  we  trust 
It  for  eternal  victory.  The  Idea  of  a  Fate 
behind  Him  that  might  destroy  Him  and  that 
keeps  Him  on  a  long  chain  would  also  destroy 
religion;  we  could  not  worship  a  God  who 
was  but  our  stoutest  comrade  under  a  Fate 
which  bound  us  both.  He  would  not  be  a 
holy  God.     And  we  can  worship  no  less. 

God's  holy  love  is  the  egoism  not  of  the 
fragmentary  individual  but  of  the  absolute 
fullness  and  perfect  personality  which  gives 
every  person  or  soul  its  place,  wealth,  and 
joy.  It  is  the  egoism  of  the  sacrificial  God 
of  the  Cross,  lifted  up  to  draw  all  men  unto 
Him.  And  an  immortality  which  shares 
such  egoism  as  that  is  our  last  destiny  as  the 
image  of  God. 


34 


CHAPTER  IV 

DE  MORTUIS 

The  egoism  of  the  will  to  live  is  qualified  by  the  suicides 
and  the  martyrs.  Demoralizing  sacrifice.  False  con- 
solations and  true.     Prayer  for  the  dead. 

We  have  seen  that  when  we  speak  of  another 
life  we  mostly  mean  a  second  cycle  of  this  life 
better  oiled.  The  Immortality  of  the  soul 
means  for  us  mostly  a  continuance,  under  bet- 
ter and  smoother  conditions,  of  that  self-as- 
severation, conscious  or  unconscious,  which 
makes  life  here.  It  expresses  that  revolt 
from  extinction  which  gives  zest  and  verve 
to  our  natural  world,  and  which  may  be,  after 
all,  but  a  part  of  our  egoism.  But  we  have 
also  seen  that  a  belief  so  great  as  Immortality 
has  come  to  be  In  Christianity  cannot  rest  at 
last  upon  the  Instinct  of  a  mere  egoism  dis- 
tended. Such  a  basis  would  reduce  Its  moral 
value,  /.  e.^  Its  ultimate  value  for  life.  We 
should  lose  life  In  our  anxiety  to  prolong  it. 
The  Christian  ground  for  immortality  Is  that 
the  Lord  hath  need  of  him. 

But  when   our   life-hunger  has  been   dis- 
cussed it  is  not  all.     Is  there  no  such  thing  as 
35 


THIS  LIFE  AND  THE  NEXT     chap. 

the  passion  for  death?  If  we  long  for  Im- 
mortality, we  also  have,  In  cases,  both  the 
wish  and  the  power  of  suicide.  If  we  could 
only  be  sure  of  extinction  by  it !  Sleep ! 
Ay,  but  what  dreams  may  come !  In  Hke 
manner  the  racial  Instinct  Is  an  adumbration 
of  the  instinct  for  immortality,  and  emerges 
In  us  when  religion  does;  but  there  Is  also 
celibacy,  whether  as  a  preference,  or  a  power, 
or  a  duty.  These  are  two  sets  of  extremes, 
life  with  its  refusal  in  death,  or  love  with  Its 
refusal  in  celibacy.  And  each  extreme  seems 
to  cross  the  other's  drift  —  life  at  war  with 
death,  love  with  celibacy.  But  there  is  one 
point  in  which  the  two  agree.  They  agree 
In  asserting  the  soul's  power  over  nature. 
The  one,  life,  asserts  that  the  soul  has  power 
to  transcend  nature  and  live  down  circum- 
stances; the  other,  suicide,  that  it  has  power 
to  slip  out  of  circumstances,  to  foil  nature, 
and  to  stop  when  nature  says  go  on.  The 
one,  love,  can  rejoice  over  untoward  fate;  the 
other,  celibacy,  can  war  down  Instincts  the 
most  primal  and  powerful.  And  If  the  soul 
Is  so  In  control  of  nature,  then  it  need  not 
end  with  nature.  It  Is  not  wholly  dependent 
on  It.  Thought  does  not  depend  on  brain. 
Still,  let  us  not  overpress  certain  points  in  the 
argument.  I  only  note  that,  when  we  urge 
the  passion  for  life  as  an  argument  for  Its 
duration,  the  disgust  or  indifference  for  life 
36 


IV  DE  MORTUIS 

must  also  be  taken  into  account.  The  atten- 
uation of  life,  by  loss  of  interest  in  it,  is 
closely  associated  with  its  brevity. 

There  is  a  farther  qualification  that  we 
have  already  marked  on  the  passion  to  live. 
The  desire  for  immortality  may  not  be  a  de- 
sire for  7ny  immortality,  but  for  that  of  an- 
other life  more  dear  to  me  than  my  own. 
That  would  greatly  affect  the  note  of  my  daily 
life.  Indeed  such  a  love  might  point  towards 
my  own  suicide  were  I  certain  that  it  would 
insure  the  continuance  of  the  other's  life  be- 
yond. I  am  ready  to  die;  he  is  not.  If  my 
death  could  be  thought  to  give  him  chances 
in  a  future  life  which  he  has  thrown  away  in 
this  I  would  welcome  it.  I  might  even  cause 
my  own  death  for  his  sake,  and  trust  the 
motive  to  win  me  mercy.  If  my  ceasing  to 
live  entirely  could  insure  him  a  life  of  good- 
ness and  happiness,  I  should  gladly  go  out 
that  he  might  have  a  fuller  life.  "  Blot  me 
out  of  the  Book  of  Life."  "  I  could  wish 
myself  accused  of  God  for  my  brethren's 
sake."  I  would  part  with  my  immortality 
for  his  if  I  had  the  power.  Indeed,  in  some 
cases,  so  far  as  people  have  the  power,  it  is 
done.  Some  lives  are  thus  given  for  others, 
not  by  an  act  of  pistol  or  poison,  but  by  long 
days  of  sacrifice;  and  sometimes,  alas!  these 
very  days  crush  the  soul  itself  and  grind  it 
down.  You  will  meet  with  a  long  life  sacri- 
37 


THIS  LIFE  AND  THE  NEXT     chap. 

fice  In  which  the  soul  seems  to  sink  in  the 
moral  scale  with  every  year,  and  the  service 
Itself  becomes  sordid.  This  is  one  of  the 
most  pathetic  of  moral  mysteries.  The  cross 
that  was  taken  up  was  more  than  the  moral 
power  could  carry.  It  shows  that  sacrifice 
is  not  in  itself  a  moral  or  an  elevating  thing. 
The  habit  Is  not  sustained  by  any  sense  of  a 
compensating  future  or  an  unfailing  God. 
There  is  often,  Indeed,  no  regard  for  a  future 
life  at  all.  That  Is  a  common  type  of  parent- 
hood among  unsplrltual  people.  All  warmth 
or  beauty  In  the  relation  dies  In  the  habit  or 
duty  of  it.  But  take  it  at  Its  best.  Would 
it  alter,  would  It  vanish,  If  immortality  came 
to  be  generally  disbelieved  ? 

Again,  at  a  time  like  the  present  the  Inter- 
est of  countless  bereaved  hearts  is  not  an  im- 
mortality for  themselves,  but  for  those  who 
have  been  caught  away  either  unfulfilled,  or 
unprepared,  or  worse  than  unprepared,  by  the 
wickedness  of  war.  What  do  our  ideas  of 
the  unseen  warrant  us  to  say  to  the  bleeding 
hearts  and  fearful  minds  of  those  left  upon 
earth? 

At  the  outset,  I  venture  to  think  that  it  is  a 
surrender  of  Christianity  to  find  from  ghosts 
a  comfort  and  hope  about  the  unseen  which 
we  do  not  draw  from  Christ.  It  is  amoral. 
It  is  another  religion  and  a  debased.  It  is 
38 


IV  DE  MORTUIS 

the  renunciation  of  the  moral  element  In 
religion  for  quite  an  inferior  mysticism 
(magic).  It  Is  a  non-moral  mysticism  which 
gets  from  some  Bond  Street  medium  a  faith 
which  the  soul  fails  to  receive  from  Christ 
or  His  apostles  and  saints.  But  that  by  the 
way. 

May  we  say  In  consolation  to  the  bereaved 
that  every  martyr  patriot  goes  straight  from 
the  field  of  death  to  the  side  of  the  Savior? 
May  we  say  that  In  the  way  of  comfort;  as  If 
a  death  for  a  great  cause,  to  whose  side  the 
man  sprang  at  a  patriotic  call,  wiped  out  the 
vices  of  a  lifetime,  or  the  betrayal  of  Inno- 
cent hearts?  We  could  say  no  such  thing. 
We  may  not  forget  our  moral  gospel  so  far 
as  to  speak  like  that.  If  these  souls  go 
straight  to  the  presence  of  the  Savior,  It  Is  to 
the  Judgment  seat  of  Christ,  where  we  must 
all  stand.  Yes,  but  It  is  where  nothing  Is 
neglected  or  forgotten,  nothing  glozed,  and 
nothing  set  down  In  malice,  but  good  and  bad 
are  in  scales  perfectly  and  kindly  just.  It  is 
quite  as  false,  on  the  other  hand,  to  quote  the 
bad  old  phrase  about  the  tree  lying  as  It  had 
fallen.  It  does  not.  It  crumbles.  Or  It  Is 
moved  away.  It  Is  turned  to  some  good  ac- 
count. We  may  be  quite  sure  that,  if  a  cup 
of  cold  water  to  a  disciple  do  not  lose  Its  re- 
ward, so  an  act  of  sacrifice  for  a  righteous 
cause  cannot  go  without  its  moral  value  for 
39 


THIS  LIFE  AND  THE  NEXT    chap. 

God,  and  a  corresponding  effect  on  the  soul. 
And  the  finest  thing  that  that  soul  ever  did, 
though  it  will  not  atone  for  a  lifetime  of 
things  foul,  yet  must  have  its  full  value  for 
the  personality  in  a  sphere  where  such  things 
tell  more  than  they  do  here.  There  shall 
never  be  one  lost  good.  The  closing  sacri- 
fice does  all  that  is  in  it  to  do.  It  is  not 
wasted.  But  it  does  not  do  what  it  is  beyond 
heroism  itself  to  do  for  the  soul.  It  does  not 
save.  Yet  it  may  be  the  moment  of  his  con- 
version. It  may  open  his  moral  eyes.  It 
may  begin  his  godly  sorrow.  It  may  be  the 
first  step  in  a  new  life,  the  beginning  of  re- 
pentance in  a  new  life  which  advances  faster 
there  than  here.  We  threw  away  too  much 
when  we  threw  Purgatory  clean  out  of  doors. 
We  threw  out  the  baby  with  the  dirty  water 
of  its  bath.  There  are  more  conversions  on 
the  other  side  than  on  this,  if  the  crisis  of 
death  opens  the  eyes  as  I  have  said.  And, 
while  it  may  be  true  that  some  mephistophe- 
lian  spirits  are  born  dead  into  that  world  as 
some  are  into  this,  is  it  not  true  also  that  for 
others  we  can  only  say  that  the  manner  of 
their  leaving  life  became  them  better  than 
anything  they  did  in  it,  and  It  is  the  first  step 
to  a  new  life,  and  not  only  another  life.  If 
a  man  do  not  at  once  receive  the  prodigal's 
robe,  at  least  he  has  the  entree  of  the  father's 
domain. 

40 


IV  DE  MORTUIS 

How  natural  in  this  connection  to  turn  to 
prayer  for  the  dead.  Prayer  for  the  dead  is 
healthier  than  tampering  with  them.  Prayer 
is  our  supreme  link  with  the  unseen  —  with 
which  otherwise  we  have  no  practical  rela- 
tions. We  should  resume  prayer  for  the 
dead,  were  it  only  to  realize  the  unity  of  the 
Church  and  our  fellowship  with  its  invisible 
part.  In  Christ  we  cannot  be  cut  off  from 
our  dead  nor  they  from  us  wherever  they  be. 
And  the  contact  is  in  prayer. 

No  converse  with  the  dead  is  so  much  of  a 
Christian  activity  as  prayer  for  them.  There 
is  no  part  of  the  practical  Christian  life  which 
is  so  intimate  and  effectual  as  prayer.  It  col- 
ors and  shapes  us  more  than  the  obvious 
forms  of  action  do.  It  is  the  work  which 
chiefly  influences  the  growth  of  faith  and  the 
quality  of  character.  Life  is  affected  from 
its  foundation  by  whether  we  pray  or  not, 
and  by  how  we  pray.  It  Is  the  main  practi- 
cal interest  between  this  life  and  the  life  un- 
seen. And  we  shall  pray  or  not  pray,  we 
shall  pray  one  way  or  another  way,  accord- 
ing as  we  believe  in  a  future  life,  and  hope 
for  ourselves,  or  for  those  dearer  than  our- 
selves. Which  is  the  better,  to  put  them  in 
God's  hands  and  pray  for  them,  or  to  bring 
strange  devices  to  pass  to  conjure  them 
up  ?  If  we  believe  in  a  continued  life  through 
spirits  and  not  through  Christ,  if  a  medium 
41 


THIS  LIFE  AND  THE  NEXT    chap. 

mean  more  than  a  Mediator  for  our  contact 
with  the  unseen,  the  manner  of  our  prayer 
will  be  accordingly.  If  we  discard  Christ's 
moral  revelation,  and  say  we  get  more  if  one 
seem  to  rise  magically  from  the  dead,  we  pass 
into  another  religion,  and  prayer  sinks  ac- 
cordingly. If  Christ's  voice  do  not  come  to 
us  from  beyond  the  grave,  if  all  we  hear  is 
but  the  dull  sound  and  hard  effort  of  a  miner's 
pick  trying  to  meet  ours  in  a  tunnel  between 
the  two  worlds,  the  note  of  our  prayer  and 
of  our  life  is  going  to  be  deeply  affected.  It 
will  lose  the  infinite  moral  value  of  union 
with  the  intercession  of  Christ,  crowning  His 
moral  and  final  victory  of  a  holy  Cross.  Or 
if  we  go  on  to  say  that  death  ends  all,  it  ends 
all  prayer.  It  not  only  stops  the  soul  that 
prays,  but  the  thought  of  it  paralyzes  the  soul 
and  its  prayer  in  life. 

On  the  other  hand,  if  death  fix  and  settle 
all,  if  the  tree  lies  for  ever  as  it  falls,  prayer 
is  much  affected,  and  so  life.  One  form  of 
prayer  is  then  excluded  —  prayer  for  the 
dead  (though  they  need  our  prayer  more  if 
they  are  suffering  yonder) .  Yet  it  would  be 
easier  to  maintain  a  belief  in  immortality  if 
we  were  encouraged  so  to  pray.  It  would 
give  us  a  practical  relation  with  the  other  side, 
and  to  other  immortality  than  our  own.  As 
it  is,  we  have  little  direct  and  practical  contact 
with  immortality  so  far  as  the  day's  life 
42 


IV  DE  MORTUIS 

goes.  No  act  of  that  life  brings  us  into 
direct  and  practical  connection  with  the  world 
of  the  dead.  It  is  a  dream;  it  Is  a  world 
not  reahzed.  It  does  not  belong  to  the 
strong  and  active  side  of  our  life.  There  is 
always  about  a  life  that  works  outward  on 
another  a  certain  note  of  distinction  which 
is  not  made  up  for  by  any  enthusiasm  of  Hu- 
manity. I  knew  an  agnostic  of  a  very  fine 
kind  who  shortened  his  life  by  his  devoted 
service  to  the  very  poor  in  a  low  part  of  Lon- 
don. There  was  to  me  a  certain  halo  about 
him.  And  yet  it  is  a  different  kind  of  spell 
that  invests  a  life  lived  in  the  power  of  an 
endless  life,  a  life  that  dwells  with  immortal- 
ity daily. 

I  venture  to  say,  then,  that  the  instinct  and 
custom  of  praying  for  our  dearest  dead,  or 
our  noblest  (like  many  of  the  soldiers  by 
whose  pain  and  death  we  live),  should  be 
encouraged  and  sanctified  as  a  new  bond  for 
practical  life  between  the  seen  and  the  unseen, 
where  we  have  bonds  all  too  few.  Nothing 
in  our  Christian  belief  is  against  it,  and  there 
IS  a  good  deal  for  it.  It  would  never  have 
been  lost  but  for  the  abuses  of  purgatory, 
masses,  and  the  commerce  which  the  Church 
made  of  a  magical  Influence  on  another 
world.  But  we  threw  away  too  much  when 
we  made  a  clean  sweep.  We  are  bidden  to 
pray  for  everything  that  Is  not  trivial,  ''In 
43 


THIS  LIFE  AND  THE  NEXT    chap. 

everything  making  your  requests  known," 
and  to  cast  every  real  care  on  God.  There 
is  nothing  serious  that  we  may  not  bring  to 
the  Father.  A  widow  praying  who  does  not 
know  where  her  next  shilling  is  to  come  from 
means  more  to  the  Father  than  a  full  choral 
service,  and  more  engages  His  heart.  And 
it  is  serious  enough  that  half  our  heart,  and 
all  our  treasure,  should  be  snatched  into  the 
unseen.  With  that  unseen  our  only  sure  link 
is  the  God  to  whom  we  pray.  But  He  is  as 
much  the  God  of  our  dead  as  of  us;  and  He 
is  a  God  from  whom  they  cannot  be  severed 
as  they  are  from  us.  May  our  prayer  to  our 
common  Father  not  put  into  petition  what  is 
always  in  our  thoughts,  and  put  into  words 
what  is  always  in  our  heart?  If  we  name 
them  before  God,  what  are  we  doing  in  our 
way  but  what  He  does  in  His,  and  calling 
things  that  are  not  as  though  they  were? 

There  are  those  who  can  quietly  say,  as 
their  faith  follows  their  love  into  the  unseen, 
*|  I  know  that  land.  Some  of  my  people 
live  there.  Some  have  gone  abroad  there  on 
secret  foreign  service,  which  does  not  admit 
of  communications.  But  I  meet  from  time  to 
time  the  Commanding  Officer.  And  when  I 
mention  them  to  Him  He  assures  me  all  is 
well." 

There  is  another  world.     It  is  not  a  mere 
44 


IV  DE  MORTUIS 

unseen,  unknown.  It  is  not  blank  being,  but 
full  of  feature,  character,  power,  reality. 
We  do  not  fall  into  it  over  the  edge  of  a  bot- 
tomless abyss.  It  is  not  clean  cut  off  from 
this  life.  All  kinds  of  processes  run  out  into 
it,  and  they  carry  current  both  ways.  For 
Christian  people  the  supreme  link,  the  Grand 
Commissure  (if  I  might  so  speak)  of  both 
worlds  is  Christ.  The  absolute  unity  of 
Christ's  soul  in  Its  victory  over  death  and 
dread,  in  Its  exorcism  of  the  occult  powers, 
gives  us  the  spiritual  unity  of  seen  and  un- 
seen. His  great  delivery  for  a  pagan  world 
was  not  from  death,  but  from  Inferior  and 
accusing  spirits  haunting,  distracting,  and  de- 
basing life.  His  living  person  is  as  real 
yonder  as  here,  as  real  here  as  there.  It  is 
the  last  effective  in  both  worlds.  He  is  a  liv- 
ing person.  He  is  not  inert  substance,  a 
mere  continuity  of  essence,  a  mere  prolonga- 
tion of  some  great  kind  of  being,  or  vitality, 
or  principle,  or  tendency.  He  is  the  House 
of  many  mansions.  He  Is  more.  He  is 
King  and  Lord.  His  unity  is  one  of  action 
and  reaction.  In  Him  the  other  world  acts 
on  this,  and  this  world  on  the  other.  But 
our  chief  action  from  this  world  on  the  other 
is  prayer.  And  our  other  world  Is  God. 
Prayer  Is  action  In  the  God  in  whom  our 
dead  live.  Were  they  In  hell.  It  Is  still  God's 
hell.  How  can  prayer  help,  either  in  nature 
45 


THIS  LIFE  AND  THE  NEXT 

or  in  grace,  being  prayer  for  our  dead? 
Can  we  think  of  them  there  and  not  pray? 
Can  we  think  of  them  there  not  praying,  and 
for  us,  as  even  Dives  prayed  for  his  family 
at  a  very  early  stage  of  his  new  moral 
growth?  They,  too,  in  proportion  as  they 
feel  the  atmosphere  of  the  other  world, — 
are  they  not  caught  up,  and  carried  on,  in  the 
stream  of  the  great  intercession?  Believers 
at  least  are  all  in  Christ,  and  surely  not  out- 
side that  intercession  in  His  name  and  power. 
In  the  early  Church,  says  Dr.  Swete,  it  was 
a  well-spread  opinion,  and  apparently  unre- 
buked,  that  the  dead  in  Christ  pray  for  the 
living.  "  No  belief  which  was  not  actually 
an  article  of  faith  was  more  general,  or  more 
deeply  cherished  in  Christendom."  Paul  has 
no  protest  against  Baptism  for  the  dead. 
There  is  nothing  apostolic  or  evangelical  that 
forbids  prayer  for  them  in  a  communion  of 
Saints  which  death  does  not  rend.  It  is  an 
impulse  of  nature  which  is  strengthened  by 
all  we  know  of  the  movement  of  grace.  The 
arguments  against  It  are  apt  to  be  more  theo- 
logically pedantic  than  spiritually  proficient. 
And  they  do  not  seem  to  have  much  heart. 


46 


CHAPTER  V 

THE  PRACTICE  OF  ETERNITY  AND  THE 
EXPERIENCE  OF  LIFE 

The  moral  psychology  of  the  saints.  The  change  wrought 
by  age  on  the  soul's  direction.  But  also  in  the 
soul's  interests.  The  effect  on  life  of  the  antepast 
of  Eternity. 

There  Is  much  to  be  yet  written  about  the 
psychology  of  spiritual  change,  and  especially 
of  conversion  and  of  the  new  birth  which 
gives  us  our  true  eternity.  For  eternal  life 
means  more  than  Immortality.  We  may 
hope  for  better  light  on  the  process  when 
there  are  more  cases,  and  more  thorough, 
and  more  Intelligent  cases,  of  the  new  birth 
among  people  with  the  modern  mind  and  the 
psychological  Insight.  The  psychology  of 
sainthood  has  not  yet  had  the  attention  which 
has  been  given  to  the  psychology  of  the  nat- 
ural man.  The  reason  is  partly  because  spir- 
itual people  are  somewhat  shy  of  revealing 
themselves,  partly  because  they  are  shy  of 
analyzing  the  hour  of  their  best  spiritual 
experience.  For  to  dissect  may  be  to  kill  it; 
It  shrivels  at  the  critical  touch;  and  we  can 
examine  but  Its  memory.  But  we  have  some 
47 


THIS  LIFE  AND  THE  NEXT     chap. 

analogies  —  and  large  analogies,  not  small. 
The  soul's  Immortality  beyond  death  may  be 
shown  to  have  a  relation  to  the  new  birth, 
similar  to  that  which  the  new  birth  has  to  the 
origin  of  the  natural  egoist  man. 

It  is  not  so  hard  to  speak  of  conversion  if 
we  mean  by  it  no  more  than  a  change  of 
direction,  a  turning  round  and  moving  the 
other  way.  But  more  than  that  is  meant 
when  it  is  described  as  regeneration,  as  a  new 
birth.  It  is  a  change  in  quality,  and  not  in 
mere  movement  or  behavior.  It  means  a 
greater  crisis  in  the  growth  of  the  moral  per- 
sonality than  the  mere  reversal  of  the  ma- 
chinery; a  new  type  of  motor  is  put  Into  the 
mill. 

It  has  been  pointed  out  that  we  can  mark 
in  the  long  course  of  the  moral  life  a  slow 
change,  which  we  may  well  call  a  slow  con- 
version, because  It  is  a  change  in  the  direction 
of  our  interest.  In  youth,  says  Paulsen, 
speaking  of  the  course  of  the  natural  life, 
our  interest  is  turned  mainly  upon  the  future; 
in  maturity  it  is  turned  upon  the  present;  and 
in  age  it  reverts  more  and  more  to  the  past. 
Such  a  change  Is  gradually  wrought  by  expe- 
rience upon  the  direction  of  the  soul.  And 
it  Is  brought  about  by  our  approach  to  an- 
other life.  For  what  are  youth,  maturity, 
and  age?  Are  they  not  all  relative  terms 
and  stages,  which  we  measure  by  their  dls- 
48 


V        THE  PRACTICE  OF  ETERNITY 

tance  from  a  fixed  point  —  namely,  death. 
They  draw  their  meaning  from  some  close  to 
which  they  move.  Their  particular  meaning 
comes  from  their  various  distance  from 
death.  But  that  means  from  eternity.  For 
death  Is  the  point  where  all  men  enter  a  rela- 
tion with  eternity  which  gathers  past,  pres- 
ent, and  future  all  Into  one  Infinite  simultane- 
ity. 

Youth,  maturity,  and  age,  I  say,  gradually 
undergo  In  us  the  great  conversion  of  interest 
that  I  have  described  when  they  are  spread 
out  and  successive;  but  they  must  undergo  a 
greater  change  still  when  we  enter  at  death 
an  eternity  in  which  they  all  coexist  in  a  time- 
less way,  and  act  simultaneously  and  col- 
lectively on  us.  And  the  frequent  contem- 
plation here  of  such  contact  with  eternity 
must  greatly  affect  life.  If  the  conduct  of 
our  life  Is  much  affected  by  the  gradual  pas- 
sage to  age  as  I  have  put  It,  without  our  being 
very  conscious  of  the  change;  if  the  history 
of  our  soul  must  be  still  more  affected  when 
we  pass  death,  and  find  all  the  stages  of  life 
in  a  timeless  simultaneous  action  on  us,  must 
not  life  be  vastly  affected  In  those  who  also 
accustom  themselves  spiritually  to  confer 
with  eternity  during  the  whole  of  life's  pas- 
sage, who  make  frequent  excursions  into  the 
unseen,  and  who  deliberately  expose  their 
soul  at  intervals  during  their  whole  life  to  the 
49 


THIS  LIFE  AND  THE  NEXT     chap. 

spiritual  Influence  which  condenses  all  suc- 
cessive stages  in  a  timeless  spiritual  experi- 
ence ?  To  dwell  devoutly  on  such  an  eternity 
must  much  modify  the  natural  development. 
It  must  hasten  it  by  anticipation,  and  ripen  us 
faster  than  any  experience  of  life  can  which 
is  merely  ethical  and  reflective.  It  moralizes 
in  a  transcendant  way  the  time  process,  the 
successive  stages  of  life.  And  especially  so 
as  we  look  back  on  life;  it  sublimates  the 
retrospect. 

Let  me  linger  on  this.  Paulsen  finely  says 
(speaking  of  the  spiritual  and  reflective  life) 
that  when  we  come  to  age  and  look  back  on 
our  moral  growth,  we  are  much  less  inter- 
ested in  recalling  the  good  times  we  had  than 
we  were  when  we  anticipated  them  in  youth; 
and  we  are  more  arrested  by  the  memories  of 
our  faults  than  of  our  pleasures.  As  to 
these,  we  prefer  to  dwell  on  the  pleasures  we 
have  given,  or  the  help  we  have  brought  — 
on  the  amount  of  service  we  have  put  into 
life.  And  we  are  more  concerned  than  we 
once  were  about  the  loss  we  have  caused,  the 
lives  we  have  stunted,  the  wrongs  we  have 
done;  or  about  the  wrongs  and  losses  which 
our  success  has  cost,  even  when  we  meant  no 
ill,  just  by  the  course  of  things.  That  is  to 
say,  our  outlook  on  life  Is  more  moral  and 
less  selfish  in  its  retrospect  than  in  Its  pros- 
pect. We  become  alive  to  the  preoccupa- 
50 


V       THE  PRACTICE  OF  ETERNITY 

tlon  of  our  old  egoism  and  the  cruelty  of  our 
youth —  or  at  least  its  crassness  and  insensi- 
bility. And  does  this  not  show  what  the 
larger  effect  of  eternity  must  be  ?  Is  that  not 
the  inverted  value  we  shall  see  in  looking 
back  on  life  when  we  are  converted  by  enter- 
ing Eternity?  And  is  it  not  the  value  we 
should  see  if  we  entered  Eternity  in  spirit 
here?  If  during  life  we  let  the  influences  of 
eternity,  of  life  in  its  simultaneity,  play  on  us 
deliberately  and  in  advance;  if  we  court,  by 
the  culture  of  our  spiritual  life  in  Christ,  the 
revelation  of  eternity  in  God,  with  whom  is 
no  after  nor  before;  if  we  let  it  all  act  on 
our  soul  from  there;  should  we  not  be  doing 
much  to  anticipate  the  verdict  of  age,  and  to 
avert  many  of  the  regrets  of  eternity?  The 
last  judgment  would  then  be  always  at  work 
on  us.  We  should  live  in  it  and  Its  power 
and  glory.  We  should  in  a  short  time  fulfill 
a  long  time.  By  the  Eternal  Spirit,  we 
should  so  number  our  days  that  we  turn  our 
hearts  to  moral  wisdom  faster  than  we  are 
changed  by  the  mere  lapse  of  the  years. 
For  the  knowledge  that  we  court  with  pains 
has  a  value  that  does  not  belong  to  what  is 
forced  on  us,  or  what  just  sinks  In  subcon- 
sciously. 

But  this  means  for  Christians  placing  our- 
selves in  ever  closer  rapport  with  Christ's 
holy  love,  and  especially  with  the  holiness  in 
51 


THIS  LIFE  AND  THE  NEXT     chap. 

it  and  the  conquest  that  means.  The  real 
power  of  immortality  is  the  eternity  of  the 
holy.  It  is,  philosophically  put,  the  invinci- 
bility of  the  moral  absolute.  Holiness,  with 
its  eternal  moral  conquest,  is  the  eternal 
thing  in  love  itself,  it  is  the  only  guarantee 
of  love's  final  victory.  As  we  take  home 
eternity  from  Christ,  it  is  the  holy  we  take 
home  in  love.  It  is  the  holy  as  what  might 
be  called  the  ingrain,  the  tissue,  the  physiog- 
nomy of  eternal  love,  the  content  and  quality 
of  it,  the  gift  and  power  it  brings,  the  warp 
to  its  woof.  It  Is  to  this  supreme  moral 
power  that  we  expose  ourselves  for  our 
cleansing,  or  shaping,  nay,  our  new  creation 
—  which  Is  something  beyond  love's  power 
except  as  holy.  And  it  is  as  moral  persons 
that  we  do  so,  for  the  holy  Is  a  moral  Idea, 
it  Is  a  moral  power.  Therefore  it  is  not  the 
mere  duration  of  the  soul  that  concerns  us, 
not  the  continuance  of  a  process  more  or  less 
natural  by  which  we  are  swept  In,  but  the 
Immortality  of  the  moral  personality  which 
Is  reared  by  our  action^  our  personal  action 
of  response.  And  the  Influence  of  holiness 
of  God  on  that  active  personality  Is  supreme, 
because  the  true  eternity  is  His  standing 
act,  It  is  Himself  in  that  pure  holy  action 
which  Is  the  native  energy  of  His  being. 
He  Is  not  a  static  being  into  whose  kind 
love  we  sink,  but  He  Is  the  eternal  Energy 
52 


V        THE  PRACTICE  OF  ETERNITY 

we  join,  which  constitutes  all  being,  and 
binds  in  holy  action  the  coherent  universe  — 
the  love  which,  as  holy,  moves  the  earth  and 
all  the  stars.  He  is  the  most  influential  en- 
vironment of  the  moral  soul.  For  His  holi- 
ness does  not  merely  act  on  man  as  an  ob- 
ject, as  it  does  on  the  natural  world;  but  it 
so  acts  on  him  that  he  returns  the  act  as  a 
subject;  it  is  a  case  of  reciprocal  action  in  a 
rising  scale.  It  is  communion.  And  we 
know,  not  as  science  knows,  but  because  we 
are  first  known  by  what  we  know,  because 
His  knowing  us  is  the  cause  of  our  knowing 
Him.  The  object  of  our  knowledge  is  the 
eternal  Subject  that  knows.  An  eternity 
which  begins  by  knowing  us  must  have  a  very 
different  effect  on  our  life  from  an  eternity 
which  we  but  know,  and  to  which  we  but  look 
forward. 


53 


CHAPTER  VI 


IMMORTALITY  AS  PRESENT  JUDGMENT 

It  is  a  vocation  rather  than  a  problem.  Life  is  another 
thing  if  we  confuse  these.  Immortality  is  a  destiny 
rather  than  a  riddle.  Live  immortally.  Choose;  do 
not  argue.  To  live  for  Eternity  is  much,  but  to  live 
Eternity  is  more. 

Like  every  other  Christian  doctrine,  that  of 
the  soul's  immortality  needs  to  be  mortal- 
ized  and  brought  home  to  our  daily  life 
without  losing  its  mystic  spell.  i\nd  in  this 
interest  we  might  regard  the  following  con- 
siderations. 

The  trouble  about  the  doctrine  of  immor- 
tality has  been  increased  by  the  fact  that  so 
many  have  turned  it  from  an  imperative  task 
to  a  leisurely  theme.  It  has  passed  from  a 
practical  task  to  be  but  a  theoretical  prob- 
lem, from  a  Gospel  to  our  will  to  be  a  riddle 
to  our  wits.  From  a  ^'  concern  "  it  has  be- 
come an  enigma.  From  a  vocation  it  has 
turned  a  question.  From  a  matter  of  con- 
science and  duty  it  has  become  a  matter  of 
poetry  and  speculation.  It  has  been  made 
to  rest  not  on  the  free  grace  of  God  but  on 
the  dim  presumptions  of  man.  The  faith  of 
54 


IMMORTALITY  AS  JUDGMENT 

it  has  turned  from  a  gift  of  God  to  a  result 
of  ours. 

And  this  greatly  affects  its  influence  on 
life.  We  should  begin  with  the  fact,  if  we 
are  Christians  at  all  (for  it  just  means  our 
part  and  lot  in  the  Christ  Who  vanquished 
death),  and  we  should  act  accordingly.  I 
do  not  see  how  a  true  believer  in  Christ  can 
doubt  the  immortality  of  those  who  are 
Christ's  (and  He  claims  all),  or  require 
occult  assurance  of  it,  which  means  finding 
Him  unsatisfactory.  But  if  you  do  not  so 
begin  and  so  act;  if,  instead  of  beginning 
with  the  belief,  you  expect  only  to  end  with 
it,  how  long  do  you  think  you  will  take  to 
arrive  at  a  conclusion?  It  may  take  a  long 
time,  for  some  all  their  lives,  for  others 
more.  Meantime  how  are  you  to  be  living? 
If  so  great  a  thing  is  true  about  life,  it  must 
have,  and  must  be  meant  to  have,  an  effect 
equally  great  on  life's  practice.  Our  behef 
about  such  a  fact  of  personality  when  it  finds 
us  must  greatly  color  life.  Is  it  an  immor- 
tal soul  that  is  living  life  out?  If  so,  and 
if  you  begin,  and  for  long  go  on,  speculating 
pro  and  con,  then  all  that  makes  the  power 
of  immortality  and  its  action  on  your  soul 
is  lost  out  of  your  first  stage.^  Your  soul 
must  lose  irreparably  in  the  end  if  that  plastic 
stage  is  not  living  the  immortality  out  as  a 
power  or  principle,  but  it  is  only  working 
55 


THIS  LIFE  AND  THE  NEXT     chap. 

towards  it  in  a  hope  rather  than  a  faith.  It 
must  make  a  great  difference  to  life  if  it  is 
not  spent  under  the  power  of  an  eternal  life 
but  only  under  its  possibility,  not  in  living 
out  the  immortality  but  only  in  weighing  it, 
considering  whether  there  is  any  such  thing 
to  live  out.  If  you  do  not  believe  in  it  you 
cannot  live  it.  And  if  you  are  not  living 
an  immortal  life  you  are  living  something 
different  and  inferior;  and  the  effect  of  this 
for  life's  tone  and  value  must  correspond. 
It  is  not  something  that  begins  when  we  die, 
but  something  that  begins  with  us  and  lives 
forth  in  our  life.  Death  is  not  the  solution 
of  the  riddle,  but  a  crisis  of  the  power.  And 
it  may  be  the  coming  home  of  judgment  on 
you  for  treating  as  a  riddle  what  is  a  power. 
Immortality  Is  really  a  destiny  pressing 
on  us  by  Christ  in  us;  it  Is  not  a  riddle  that 
just  interests  us.  It  is  not  chess,  It  Is  war. 
It  is  a  duty  bearing  on  us.  It  is  not  a  theme 
that  attracts  us.  When  duties  turn  to  mere 
problems  and  destinies  become  but  Intellec- 
tual toys.  It  Is  an  evil  time.  It  Is  not  well 
when  we  stop  doing  in  order  to  discuss.  We 
cannot  safely  turn  the  will's  duty  over  to 
thought.  Duty  Is  a  thing  we  must  do.  For 
effect  on  life  we  must  own  It  practically,  not 
debate  its  existence.  The  gifts  of  God  are 
not  there  to  be  looked  In  the  mouth  but  to 
be  lived  in  the  heart.  There  Is  no  Christian 
56 


VI      IMMORTALITY  AS  JUDGMENT 

question  about  our  duty  to  obey  the  immortal 
call;  the  only  possible  question  is  as  to  the 
form  of  obedience;  or  it  is  the  question 
whether  we  are  obeying  it  or  not.  Our  im- 
mortality lies  on  us  with  that  kindling  weight, 
that  weight  of  glory,  that  weight  of  wings. 
Weight  but  not  pressure.  The  wings  that 
add  to  our  weight  yet  lift  us  from  the  ground. 
"  My  soul  cleaveth  to  the  dust;  quicken  Thou 
me  according  to  Thy  winged  word."  Such 
a  word,  gift,  and  destiny  is  our  immortality. 
Our  Christian  business  is  to  crystallize  it. 
It  is  an  obligation;  it  is  not  a  mere  stirring 
in  us.  It  is  a  duty  on  our  person  and  action; 
it  is  not  a  mere  process  of  our  natural  organ- 
ism, to  whose  stream  we  have  just  to  yield 
ourselves.  Life  is  not  just  a  stream  which 
we  have  reason  to  think  flows  on  beyond 
a  certain  point,  or  continues  when  it  disap- 
pears 'round  a  certain  bend.  It  is  not  an 
inevitable  movement  towards  the  future.  It 
is  rather  a  doom  from  the  past,  a  work  in 
the  present,  or  a  destiny  from  above.  We 
cannot  tarry  to  argue  if  there  is  an  immor- 
tality awaiting  us;  we  must  obey  the  immor- 
tality urging  and  lifting  us.  We  do  not 
move  to  a  possible  mirage  of  a  city  of  God; 
the  citizenship  is  within  us.  Ask,  am  I  liv- 
ing as  immortal  —  not  as  one  who  will  be 
immortal?  Do  not  waste  time  asking  if 
there  is  a  coming  eternity;  ask,  what  must  I  | 
57  ' 


THIS  LIFE  AND  THE  NEXT     chap. 

do  to  give  effect  to  my  present  eternity;  how 
shall  I  be  loyal  to  the  eternal  responsibility 
in  me  and  on  me?  Is  my  faith  a  life?  It 
must  make  a  great  difference  to  life  whether 
we  treat  our  eternity  as  a  present  or  a  future, 
as  a  power  or  as  a  possibility,  as  a  duty  or 
as  an  ideal  —  whether  our  Christ  is  a  By- 
stander or  an  occupant  of  us.  Our  immor- 
tality Is  really  our  judgment  and  Its  joy  of 
righteousness;  it  is  not  a  mere  condition  of 
judgment,  nor  the  region  of  it.  It  does  not 
become  a  mere  venue,  a  mere  stage  for  judg- 
ment, a  set  scene.  Nor  does  It  provide  a 
mere  asbestos  either  for  future  flames,  or  for 
the  happier  incandescence.  It  has  no  ex- 
istence apart  from  a  content  of  weal  or  woe. 
And  that  content  depends  on  us  (under 
grace).  Our  immortality  is  not  just  the 
glory  (or  gloom)  of  going  on  still  to  be. 
It  is  not  mere  duration.  There  is  no  such 
thing,  no  such  abstraction.  Our  eternity  is 
something  that  remains  when  all  its  events 
have  passed.  It  is  the  state  of  a  soul,  the 
content  and  quality  of  Its  life,  when  events 
in  a  sequence  cease,  when  they  have  come 
and  gone  with  the  soul's  verdict  on  them,  and 
the  reaction  of  such  verdict  on  the  soul.  It 
is  good  or  evil  according  to  choice.  It  is  a 
disparting  to  one  of  two  great  seas.  It  does 
not  call  chiefly  for  contemplation  but  decis- 
ion. What  Paul  did  in  speaking  to  Felix 
58 


VI       IMMORTALITY  AS  JUDGMENT 

was  not  to  persuade  him  of  immortality;  it 
was  to  turn  immortality  from  a  curious  inter- 
est to  a  crushing  crisis,  from  a  curious  in- 
terest hovering  about  life,  and  discussible  at 
the  tables  of  roues,  to  a  searching  judgment 
on  life's  interior.  It  was  preaching  that 
Felix  did  not  like  with  wine  and  walnuts. 
The  salons  shun  it,  and  the  Reviews  ignore 
it.  Nor  was  it  in  the  nature  of  popular 
preaching.  It  did  not  carry  the  accent  either 
of  culture,  or  of  sentiment,  or  of  mere  urbane 
consideration.  It  did  not  humor  the  in- 
stincts of  the  heart,  nor  hallow  the  graces  of 
the  home.  It  did  not  agitate  the  questions 
that  occupy  the  periodicals  on  the  one  hand, 
nor  those  that  captivate  the  young  on  the 
other.  But  it  was  the  kind  of  preaching 
which  brings  the  other  life  into  this,  which 
shapes  our  behavior  in  time  by  the  nature 
of  an  immanent  eternity  (whether  we  speak 
of  public  conduct  or  private),  which  trans- 
mutes time  into  eternity  and  does  not  simply 
prolong  it.  It  translates  a  present,  it  does 
not  discuss  a  future.  It  does  more  than  edu- 
cate, it  converts.  It  does  more  than  enlarge 
our  moral  horizon,  or  manipulate  the  themes 
of  moral  culture.  It  makes  the  new  heaven 
and  the  new  earth  wherein  dwelleth  right- 
eousness. 

That  is  a  sample  of  the  way  we  must  res- 
cue  the   spiritual   for  the  ethical,   moralize 
59 


THIS  LIFE  AND  THE  NEXT 

our  theology,  and  make  creed  practice. 
However  much  religion  may  be  life,  theol- 
ogy is  deeper  life.  It  rises  deeper  in  God's 
life,  it  goes  deeper  into  ours.  It  moralizes 
all  by  its  origin  in  the  holy.  A  theme  like 
Immortality,  at  least  —  we  do  it  wrong,  be- 
ing so  majestical,  to  explore  it  but  as  a  cav- 
ern with  our  torches,  instead  of  honoring  it 
as  our  light  and  sun  and  showing  it  forth 
accordingly.  ^  It  is  much  to  live  for  Eternity, 
to  live  Eternity  is  more. 


60 


CHAPTER  VII 

ETERNITY  WITHIN  TIME,  TIME  WITHIN 
ETERNITY 

The  other  life  then  is  the  other  life  now.  The  timeless 
in  Time.  Time's  Sacrament.  We  are  Eternal  eadi 
moment.     Eternity  and  progress. 

"  This  is  eternal  life,"  says  Jesus,  "  to  know 
God,  to  know  Me."  It  is  a  thing  indwell- 
ing with  us,  it  is  not  a  thing  outside  that 
awaits  us.  It  is  ourselves  in  a  phase,  in  a 
new  relation.  Myself  am  hell;  myself  am 
my  own  heaven.  It  is  not  a  realm  we  enter, 
nor  an  influx  that  enters  us.  Moral  though 
it  be,  it  is  a  mystic  thing  now  rather  than  a 
future  then,  an  inner  presence  not  an  outer 
goal,  a  power  rather  than  an  expectation. 
It  is  to  know  God  as  holy  love.  But  it  is 
not  to  know  Him  as  an  object,  not  to  know 
Him  as  science  knows,  not  to  know  Him 
in  a  cognition,  which  sees  a  thing  at  the 
other  end  of  our  observation  or  of  our 
thought.  It  is  to  know  Him  by  an  inner 
appropriation.  It  is  by  an  interpenetration. 
We  know  what  begins  by  knowing  us.  We 
know  because  we  are  known.  It  is  the  kind 
of  knowledge  which  does  not  give  power  but 
6i 


THIS  LIFE  AND  THE  NEXT     chap. 

is  power,  where  our  self  Is  not  just  enhanced 
but  lost,  and  only  in  that  way  found  in  its 
fullness.  The  Christ,  who  knew  God  best, 
had  power  over  all;  but  it  was  power  to  give 
as  to  Him  it  was  given,  and  to  give  to  His 
own  eternal  life.  Eternal  life  is  much  more 
than  contact;  It  Is  living  communion  with 
spiritual  and  eternal  reality.  And  on  that 
reality's  initiative.  Real  love  Is  not  that  we 
loved  God  but  He  us. 

Eternal  life  is  not  so  inward  that  it  Ig- 
nores the  world  as  phantasmal.  Especially 
It  does  not  ignore  history.  UnhistorIc  spir- 
ituality Is  often  a  danger  to  faith.  Some  say 
it  Is  one  of  the  greatest  to-day.  The  true 
spirituality  Is  rooted  In  history.  It  springs 
from  an  incarnation  of  action.  It  Is  not  a 
matter  of  Illumination.  It  does  not  arise 
from  a  mere  emanation  of  light.  It  is  know- 
ing God  In  Christ  the  Redeemer.  The  resur- 
rection to  immortality  crowns  the  redemption 
from  guilt.  It  Is  not  the  lone  soul  with  the 
Alone,  Ignoring  two  millenniums  of  revela- 
tion and  its  saints.  It  Is  not  Intuition,  mys- 
tic and  gnostic.  It  Is  In  a  historic  Mediator. 
Is  that  a  piece  of  theology?  Is  a  Mediator 
between  the  eternal  spirit  and  the  finite  an 
unreality,  an  Intrusion?  The  mystic  soul 
may  Impatiently  think  so,  but  the  moral  soul 
finds  such  mediation  the  way  to  reality;  and 
the  mystic  experience  Is  not  quite  trustworthy 
62 


VII         ETERNITY  WITHIN  TIME 

about  reality.  The  pagan  gods  had  not  me- 
diators, because  they  were  not  real  or  good 
gods;  but  the  living  God  has  a  living  Re- 
vealer.  To  know  the  living  God  is  to  know 
Christ,  to  know  Christ  is  to  know  the  living 
God.  We  do  not  know  God  by  Christ  but 
in  Him.  We  find  God  when  we  find  Christ; 
and  in  Christ  alone  we  know  and  share  His 
final  purpose.  Our  last  knowledge  is  not  the 
contact  of  our  person  with  a  thing  or  a 
thought;  it  is  intercourse  of  person  and 
person.  We  meet  God  in  His  coming  In 
Christ,  meet  Him  there  on  His  own  tryst, 
and  find  there  that  we  know  only  because  we 
were  first  known.  We  do  not  infer  from 
Christ  to  God.  And  in  Christ  we  have 
Eternal  life,  we  do  not  simply  qualify  for  it, 
we  do  not  just  take  the  needful  steps. 

The  true  spiritual  intuition  looks  through 
the  historic  Christ.  Otherwise  it  is  apt  to  be 
individual  and  not  social.  It  haunts  a  cell 
and  retires  from  a  church.  It  is  more  devout 
than  sacramental.  It  is  not  historic  and  it  is 
not  moral  in  its  nature.  It  is  more  prone 
to  visions  than  revelations;  it  is  more  mys- 
tic than  positive.  It  develops  subjective 
frames  rather  than  objective  powers.  It 
often  craves  fusion  with  God  rather  than 
communion.  From  the  abeyance  of  the 
moral  note  it  tends  to  think  of  process  more 
than  action,  of  imagination  more  than  con- 
63 


THIS  LIFE  AND  THE  NEXT     chap. 

science,  of  elation  more  than  sympathy, 
of  an  evolution  instead  of  a  redemption. 
It  Is  more  Interested  In  sanctity  than  in 
righteousness.  It  lives  on  an  inner  light 
rather  than  a  redeeming  power,  a  charity 
rather  than  a  righteousness,  a  group  of  saints 
rather  than  a  Kingdom  of  God.  Its  immor- 
tality is  a  beatific  vision  rather  than  the  recip- 
rocal energy  of  eternal  life.  Christian  in- 
tuition turns  on  our  insight  into  Christ,  which 
to  an  extent  varies  with  temperament;  but 
Christian  faith  turns  on  Christ's  action  on 
us  and  for  us,  which  Is  removed  from  our 
variations,  and  can  be  met  and  answered  well 
by  some  whose  spiritual  penetration  Is  not 
yet  subtle,  vivid,  or  vocal. 

Another  life  —  what  is  the  other  life  then 
but  that  which  is  the  other  life  now?  What 
is  it  but  the  eternal  life  which  Is  our  true  life 
here,  only  viewed  as  going  on,  viewed  In 
amount  rather  than  In  kind,  in  extent  rather 
than  quality,  as  prolonged  rather  than  In- 
tense, as  expressed  In  terms  of  time,  dura- 
tion or  quantity,  Instead  of  worth.  We  ask, 
how  long.  Instead  of  how  rich,  how  full,  we 
live.  ^  Some  will  remember  the  Splnozlst 
description  of  the  two  disparate  aspects  of 
the  great  reality.  Spinoza  spoke  of  these 
aspects  as  thought  and  extension.  And  there 
was  only  an  empirical  connection  between 
them.  Well,  the  two  aspects  of  eternal  life 
64 


vii         ETERNITY  WITHIN  TIME 

correspond.  We  may  view  it  quantitatively, 
extensively,  as  everlasting,  or  qualitatively, 
sub  specie  eternitatis,  as  moral.  Now  are 
these,  like  extension  and  thought,  irrelevant 
to  each  other  and  disparate?  Are  we  quite 
ignorant  of  what  has  these  features,  of  that 
whose  physiognomy  they  are?  The  life  that 
goes  on  —  is  it  not  the  life  of  moral  person- 
ality? That  is  soul,  that  is  reality.  When 
we  speak  of  another  life  we  think  of  our  life 
as  enduring;  but  it  is  the  continuance  of  the 
same  eternal  life  which  is  our  good  as  souls 
here  —  intense  at  each  immeasurable  mo- 
ment, infinite  in  each  particle,  as  it  were,  and 
royal  in  its  quality,  whatever  its  extent  may 
be.  It  does  not  matter  for  the  moment 
whether  we  think  of  its  imperative  as  that 
of  conscience  or  that  of  love.  It  is  the  great 
shaping  and  guiding  power,  whose  influence 
is  really  out  of  all  proportion  to  our  sense  of 
its  range. 

Even  when  by  the  other  life  we  mean  the 
eternal  life  in  its  aspect  of  duration,  we  still 
prize  it  only  for  its  quality.  We  want  it,  not 
because  there  is  a  lot  of  it,  but  because  it  is 
good.  Without  that  quality  it  would  be  a 
Tithonus  burden,  and  we  might  well  shrink 
from  it.  The  same  thing  makes  it  precious 
both  there  and  here.  It  is  its  intrinsic  excel- 
lence and  influence.  It  is  its  excellence  and 
influence  over  what  we  call  nature.  It  is  its 
65 


THIS  LIFE  AND  THE  NEXT    chap. 

quality,  not  simply  as  enhancing  us  (which  is 
after  all  but  an  extension  or  aggrandizement 
of  our  Ego),  but  as  regenerating  us,  as  giv- 
ing us  another  center,  which  is  the  source  of 
another  value,  and  so  makes  a  new  creation. 
It  is  as  holy  that  the  soul  is  permanent,  it  is 
in  virtue  of  its  quality.  It  is  as  holy  that  God 
Himself  is  eternal,  in  incessant  moral  vic- 
tory. Thus,  as  we  shall  see  later,  we  con- 
nect immortality  very  closely  with  the  new 
birth,  which  is  the  foundation  of  Christian 
ethic. 

As  to  natural  ethic  It  might  plausibly  be 
said  that  it  could  go  on  in  our  posterity  for 
Its  own  sake  even  were  immortality  denied. 
Truth  (it  is  even  held)  would  be  a  good 
thing  were  there  none  to  believe  it,  and  kind- 
ness were  all  hearts  dust. 

"  It  comforteth  my  soul  to  know 
That  though  I  perish  truth  is  so." 

That  Is  In  some  ways  absurd.  (Yet  read 
Isaiah  II.  6.)  It  Is  a  very  Individualist 
view.  As  was  long  ago  said,  pagans  have 
an  ethic  but  paganism  has  not.  Even  if  a 
case  could  be  made  out  from  the  good  pagans 
—  that  virtue  was  good  in  its  own  right,  their 
failure  was  to  get  people  In  general  to  be- 
lieve and  act  on  It,  whose  brief  life  would 
be  a  merry  one  at  all  costs.  But  for  Chris- 
66 


VII         ETERNITY  WITHIN  TIME 

tian  ethic  the  view  that  goodness  was  Indif- 
ferent to  immortality  could  not  be  made  even 
plausible.  To  abolish  a  future  life  would 
be  to  abolish  the  eternal  life  of  the  present 
{i.e,  the  Eternal  Spirit,  or  the  Eternal 
Christ) ,  which  takes  the  place  of  the  natural 
man,  and  makes  the  Christian  soul  and  its 
conduct.  If  you  destroy  the  permanency, 
you  do  not  leave  the  quality  unaffected.  The 
new  power  is  of  God's  spirit.  It  is  absolute, 
timeless.  If  at  a  point  It  could  cease.  It 
would  be  struck  at  the  heart;  Its  absoluteness, 
its  divinity  would  cease  — "  Half  dead  to 
know  that  it  could  die." 

When  we  speak  of  eternal  life  we  are  apt 
to  think  of  it  as  a  second  order  of  things, 
which  might  be  developed  out  of  time  or 
inserted  into  It,  but  which  Is  less  obvious, 
less  real,  more  ghostly  and  metaphorical. 
But,  if  we  come  to  consider  closely,  all  the 
deepest  life  is  timeless;  and  the  more  life 
there  is  the  more  timeless  It  feels.  The  more 
Intensely  we  live  the  less  we  take  note  of  pass- 
ing time.  Life  is  full  of  the  present  the  more 
vital  It  Is.  But  what  does  that  mean? 
The  present?  Suppose  we  look  Into  that. 
Should  I  be  metaphysical  (and  therefore  an 
enemy  of  the  human  race)  or  should  I  be 
but  psychological  (and  a  favorite  of  the 
hour)  if  I  took  this  line?  What  Is  the  pres- 
ent? Has  it  any  real  existence?  Is  any 
67 


THIS  LIFE  AND  THE  NEXT     chap. 

fixed  point  of  time  conceivable?  Can  you 
arrest  any  moment?  Have  we  not  to  do 
with  something  that  is  not  so  much  a  point 
in  time  as  timelessly  interior  to  time,  and  to 
all  its  movement  through  what  we  call 
points?  Each  moment  of  time  is  outwardly 
but  a  spark  at  the  contact  of  past  and  future, 
a  point  that  is  gone  before  you  can  say  it  is. 
What  is  the  present,  outwardly  seen,  but  the 
briefest  flash  in  the  perpetual  becoming  of 
things?  And  we  master  it  only  by  pressing 
into  its  inwardness,  by  union  with  that  per- 
fect being  which  has  a  becoming  only  in  us 
and  our  history.  The  moment  is  a  "  shoot 
of  everlastingness."  There  Is  no  present, 
because  there  is  no  time.  An  abounding  life 
which  is  all  present,  even  if  not  all  conscious, 
is  timeless.  But  not  as  a  dreamy  entity  or 
velleity  might  be.  It  is  eternal  as  a  moral 
act  or  personality  is.  It  expresses  itself 
chiefly  In  action;  and  an  act,  In  its  nature,  as 
the  act  of  a  spiritual  personality  Is  a  timeless 
thing.  As  an  act  of  the  spirit  it  partakes 
of  the  energy  eternal.  The  great  acts  of  the 
great  personalities  at  a  point  of  history  are 
superior  to  time,  Interior  to  It,  and  beyond  it. 
So  also  their  bodies  mock  space,  and  five  feet 
of  corporeality  may  mold  the  soul  of  man 
for  ever.  The  greater  we  grow  the  less  are 
we  the  victims  of  time  or  space,  and  the  more 
we  are  immortal.  And  the  more  we  live  in 
68 


vn        ETERNITY  WITHIN  TIME 

our  true  and  active  immortality  the  more 
greatly  we  live  —  most  of  all  as  when  we  live 
in  Christ,  whose  whole  person  went  into  one 
eternal  and  redeeming  act.  n 

Eternity  Is  thus  beyond  time  only  in  the  ^ 
sense  of  being  deep  within  it.  "  He  hath  set 
eternity  in  their  hearts."  It  is  within  our 
interior,  and  beyond  it  —  above  it  in  that 
way.  It  is  more  interior.  It  inhabits  our  _^ 
inner  castle.^  '*  Religion  is  not  the  percep-' 
tion  of  the  infinite;  it  is  having  the  infinite 
within  us."  That  makes  the  moral  value  of 
Immortality  for  life.  We  are  living  now  the 
life  beyond.  Time  and  space  are  rather  dis- 
tilling our  eternity  than  preparing  for  it. 
Think  of  the  automatic  reaction  on  our  soul 
of  our  resolves  and  deeds,  so  that  what  we 
have  been  makes  us  what  we  are.  Think, 
then,  more  deeply  still,  of  the  power,  the 
eternity,  molding  these  wills  and  deeds. 
Our  eternal  life  is  not  at  the  end  of  our 
days  but  at  the  heart  of  them,  the  source 
of  them,  the  control  of  them.  Time  is 
there  to  reveal  or  to  deposit  Eternity, 
not  to  qualify  for  it.  Eternity  does  not  lie 
at  the  other  end  of  time,  it  pervades  it.  We 
can  invert  our  way  of  putting  it.  Time  Is, 
as  it  were,  the  precipitate  of  eternity  — 
should  I  say  the  secretion  of  it?  Time  is  the 
living  garment  of  the  God  In  us.  And  It  can 
be  not  only  transparent  but  permeable.  It 
69 


THIS  LIFE  AND  THE  NEXT    chap. 

has  the  sacramental,  the  miraculous  power 
to  pass  us  into  eternity  at  each  moment,  and 
not  only  when  we  die.  Time  is  divine  in  the 
sacramental,  and  not  in  the  essential,  sense. 
That  is,  the  divine  thing  is  achieved  in  the 
souls  time  makes,  whether  time  be  a  form  of 
the  eternal  consciousness  or  not.  Time  is 
divine  in  function  if  not  in  being.  *'  For  re- 
ligion," says  Schleiermacher,  "  immortality 
means  being  one  with  the  Infinite  in  the  midst 
of  finitude.  It  means  to  be  eternal  at  every 
moment."  We  have  begun  eternity.  We 
began  It  at  birth.  The  sacramental  value  of 
time  I  will  discuss  further  in  the  next  chapter. 

But  does  that  not  farther  mean  this,  that 
life  and  history  are  there  to  let  God  get 
out  rather  than  to  let  man  get  In?  We  go 
forward  really  only  as  we  can  take  God  with 
us  and  realize  His  Kingdom.  The  grand 
interest  of  man  is  not  progress  but  eternity, 
not  length  but  wealth  of  days,  and  wealth 
moral  and  spiritual.  Above  progress  Is  the 
Kingdom  of  God  —  a  conception  that  is  re- 
placed In  the  fourth  gospel  by  the  idea  of 
Eternal  Life.  It  is  eternity,  It  Is  the  King- 
dom of  God,  that  Is  the  standard  to  decide 
what  Is  progress  and  what  is  not. 

This  Is  the  point  where  religious  liberalism 

comes  to  grief,  especially  In  Its  popular  forms. 

It  becomes  secularized  as  the  march  of  mind. 

But  a  life  which  realizes  that  its  great  interest 

70 


VII        ETERNITY  WITHIN  TIME 

is  not  progress  but  eternity  must  be  con- 
cerned about  much  else  than  the  advance  of 
culture.  It  must  be  a  life  very  different  from 
one  to  which  progress  Is  everything.  It  can 
rest.  It  Is  not  always  on  the  move.  It  can 
be  guided  and  steered.  It  has  a  worship. 
It  has  at  least  a  pole  star  and  a  compass.  It 
must  be  much  higher  than  a  life  of  mere  pro- 
gress, and  so  much  the  more  real.  As  we 
draw  nearer  death  by  age,  and  Immortal 
things  become  more  real  to  us.  It  Is  a  com- 
monplace to  say  that  we  tend  to  grow  more 
conservative.  But  why  Is  It  the  case?  It 
Is  not  that  we  grow  lazy  and  reactionary,  but 
rather  because  eternity  Is  set  deeper  In  our 
heart.  We  become  more  alert  In  a  certain 
direction.  We  become  more  sensitive  to 
what  Is  deep  than  to  what  is  lively,  to  a 
searchlight  than  to  the  flares,  to  what  Is  the 
sure,  permanent,  and  timeless  thing  In  all 
movement.  We  realize  more  the  goal  eter- 
nal, which  rules  within  every  point  of  pro- 
gress as  Its  true  ground,  which  has  a  quality 
and  a  command  of  Its  own  to  stamp  upon  all 
movement,  a  norm  (and  not  only  a  law)  to 
set  on  all  change,  and  which,  therefore.  Is 
the  only  test  we  have  whether  a  movement  Is 
progress  or  not.  The  great  Interest  Is  not 
progress;  It  Is  the  eternity  which  all  along 
the  line  looks  forth  from  what  we  call  pro- 
gress (or  looks  In  on  It),  and  passes  a  judg- 
71 


THIS  LIFE  AND  THE  NEXT     chap. 

ment  on  it.  The  eternal  element  in  us  meas- 
ures the  events  which  teach,  impress,  and  even 
shape  the  soul.  The  soul  remains  when 
these  are  gone.  It  passes  judgment  on  them 
when  they  are  dead.  The  eternal  soul  re- 
acts on  its  impressions.  It  selects  some  as 
making  for  its  true  progress,  and  rejects  oth- 
ers which  make  the  other  way.  Its  ever- 
abiding  eternity  is  the  measure  of  its  never- 
abiding  times  and  phases.  Eternity  saturates 
and  shapes  time,  time  but  clothes  and  serves 
eternity.  And  the  soul,  as  eternal,  by  an 
epigenetic  ^  power  on  its  environment,  selects 
some  directions  of  change  for  its  own,  and 
discards  others.  It  is  thus  the  real  creative 
power  in  things.  It  exercises  over  them  all 
a  creative  criticism,  appreciative,  selective, 
and  expansive.  This  idea  of  a  creative  crit- 
icism from  above  is  more  positive  and  Chris- 
tian than  that  of  creative  evolution.  It  does 
more  justice  to  personality,  and  pays  it  more 
respect.  To  be  judged  or  chosen  is  a  nobler 
thing  than  to  be  hurried  on  by  a  stream. 
Though  evolution  itself  is  a  great  step  to 
the  assertion  of  that  moral  eternity  within 
time  which  the  mere  thinker  is  apt  to  ignore. 
For  it  gives  room   for  that  election,   that 

1  The  theory  of  development  known  as  epigenesis  is 
different  from  that  called  preformation  in  having  a  selec- 
tive action  on  its  environment.  AH  is  not  in  the  germ  in 
miniature,  which  is  a  simple  body  without  structural 
sign  of  its  discriminating  power. 

72 


vn        ETERNITY  WITHIN  TIME 

choice,  which  must  always  be  associated  with 
the  notion  of  a  personal  God  in  relation  to 
His  world.  The  conviction  of  that  eternity 
which  is  the  true  immortahty,  of  that  timeless 
simultaneity  and  compatibility  of  things,  is 
what  really  sets  up  the  idea  of  progress; 
since,  as  I  say,  only  an  eternal  and  final  stan- 
dard which  is  at  once  ground  and  goal,  and 
which  unites  in  itself  both  causation  and  final- 
ity, enables  us  to  describe  any  movement  in 
time  as  progress  or  the  reverse.  And  it  is 
therefore  of  first  moment  for  the  form  and 
color  of  life,  personal  or  social. 


73 


CHAPTER  VIII 

LIFE  A  SACRAMENT 

Time  sacramental  of  Eternity.  How  part  and  lot  in  the 
Eternal  raises  the  common  tasks  and  tragedies  of  life 
beyond  the  sordid. 

It  is  quite  true  that  time  is  a  gift  to  us  as 
immortality  is.  But  time  is  given  us  that  we 
may  become  free  of  it,  and  may  reach  the  un- 
dying spirit  and  quintessence  of  time.  Our 
business  in  time  is  to  resist  it  even  while  we 
appropriate  it.  We  take  the  honey  from  the 
flower  we  have  to  struggle  to  enter  and  are 
soon  to  leave  with  a  struggle.  The  soul, 
shaped  as  it  Is  by  the  events  of  time,  has  yet 
in  the  end  more  power  to  determine  them. 
A  soul  like  Christ's,  immersed  in  a  year's 
events,  can  yet  be  creative  for  history.  Our 
growth  in  time  (if  we  may  change  the  image) 
is  to  resist  its  petrefaction,  to  resent  our 
burial  in  time,  and  the  sealing  of  the  grave. 
And  this  we  can  only  do  immortally  —  by 
rising  always  into  the  timeless  heaven,  and 
in  Christ  continually  ascending  by  the  experi- 
ence of  a  constant  new  creation.  The  second 
death  is  to  miss  the  second  creation.  We 
grow  in  soul  if  we  feel  spiritually  younger 
74 


LIFE  A  SACRAMENT 

to-day  than  yesterday,  and  to-morrow  than 
to-day.  We  are  less  loaded  with  years  be- 
cause we  are  more  lifted  in  the  eternal.  We 
taste  the  rejuvenescence  of  Immortality, 
where  ends  meet  and  things  come  full  cir- 
cle. We  live  where  the  Father  for  ever 
meets  the  Son,  the  first  the  last,  the  beginning 
the  end,  age  youth,  and  all  things  return  for 
their  completion  to  the  perfection  in  which 
they  began.  Time  is  sacramental  of  Eter- 
nity. 

As  we  follow  up  this  line  of  reflection,  I 
say,  there  is  borne  in  on  us  something  more 
than  the  religious  significance  of  life.  There 
comes  home  to  us  not  only  Its  solemn  but  its 
sacramental  value.  Life  means  more  than 
even  the  poets  tell.  It  has  more  than  an 
imaginative  worth.  It  has  more  than  a  su- 
pernatural. It  has  more  than  an  everlasting. 
It  has  a  holy  and  eternal  worth.  I  mean 
that  not  only  is  it  involved  in  the  process  or 
tragedy  of  the  Universe,  but  it  is  partner  In 
the  solution  of  that  tragedy  in  God.  History 
is  not  only  reconciled,  it  is  charged  with  the 
message  and  power  of  reconciliation.  Even 
art  can  embalm  life  in  amber.  It  can  cast 
on  it  the  aesthetic  spell,  and  for  a  time  trans- 
port us  to  another  world.  It  can  make  our 
noisy  lives  seem  moments  in  the  energy  of 
the  eternal  silence.  But  a  greater  than  art 
75 


THIS  LIFE  AND  THE  NEXT    chap. 

is  here.  There  is  a  greater  secret  than  even 
art  commands  in  the  relation  of  the  soul  and 
the  Holy.  The  action  in  time  of  the  Holy 
and  Eternal  Spirit  of  our  Redemption  is 
greater  than  that  of  genius.  We  are  told 
indeed  by  many  a  seer  that  *'  the  momentary 
life  of  to-day  is  a  factor  in  the  possession  of 
all  time  and  being."  Philosophy  can  teach 
us  that,  whether  it  get  it  home  or  not,  whether 
there  be  much  help  in  it  or  not.  But  we  have 
to  do  with  more  than  a  procession  of  being, 
or  a  dance  of  ideas;  and  we  have  to  do  with 
getting  that  something  more  home  to  people. 
We  have  to  do  with  an  eternal  providence, 
with  a  heart  of  love  eternal,  and  with  a  will 
absolute  over  the  hearts  and  in  the  wills  of 
men;  and  we  have  to  do  with  a  public  faith 
in  it.  I  mean  something  more  than  dogmat- 
ics —  certainly  more  than  dogmatics  as  a 
sort  of  Palladium  we  carry  about  in  an  ark. 
I  have  in  mind  the  riddle  of  the  painful  earth, 
for  which  theology  must  be  some  kind  of  solu- 
tion. We  have  to  connect  up  earth's  trag- 
edy with  God's. 

The  tragedy  of  the  plodding  peasant,  drag- 
ging a  rheumatic  existence  from  the  soil,  and 
dying  alone  and  broken-hearted  with  his 
daughter's  shame  or  his  son's  crime  —  we 
have  to  integrate  that  with  an  eternal  tragedy, 
an  immortal  solution  of  it,  and  a  final  joy. 
We  have  to  link  it  with  God's  disappointment 
76 


Tin  LIFE  A  SACRAMENT 

In  His  Son  man,  His  grief  and  His  joy  and 
His  victory  in  His  Son  Christ.  Is  there  any 
experience  possible  to  the  soul,  is  there  any 
power  at  work  on  it,  any  revelation,  any  re- 
demption, whereby  the  very  horrors  of 
world-war  and  wickedness  can  be  made  sac- 
ramental of  the  fullness  of  joy?  Can  they 
be  underagents  for  the  last  righteousness  and 
angels  of  the  last  judgment  which  secures  the 
last  peace?  Is  it  a  delusion,  or  is  it  Time's 
sacramental  secret,  that  a  person,  like  Christ, 
of  two  thousand  years  ago  is  as  near  us  all 
now  as  He  was  to  men  then?  Have  we  with 
us  a  power  of  life  by  which  these  two  millen- 
niums do  not  divide  us  from  Christ,  like  a 
world  of  mists  and  seas,  but  unite  us  —  as 
commerce  and  invention  make  the  ocean  a 
bond  and  not  a  gulf?  Is  it  a  dream  that  the 
issue  in  His  Cross  is  greater,  and  more  creat- 
ive, than  all  the  issues  of  history?  Why  do 
the  heathen  rage  but  for  the  Kingdom  of 
God's  Son?  And  have  we  a  power  by  which 
ephemeral  lives  are  not  only  absorbed  in  a 
stream  universal  but  become  revelations  and 
energies  from  a  person  of  absolute  love? 
Can  they  become  channels  of  the  Holy  Ghost, 
in  the  power  of  One  Who  was  more  than  a 
channel,  and  more  than  a  revelation  —  Who 
was  the  incarnation  of  God  the  Redeemer? 
That  is  what  the  Cross  of  Christ  as  the 
source  of  his  Spirit  proposes  to  do  with  them. 
77 


THIS  LIFE  AND  THE  NEXT     chap. 

The  victory  of  an  immortal  Redeemer  be- 
comes the  effective  point  and  principle  of 
life's  most  sacramental  significance.  It  is 
the  source  of  any  worth  life  can  have  not 
only  to  God  but  among  us  for  God,  as  the 
vehicle  of  the  Eternal  Spirit,  as  a  human 
priest  to  human  kind.  The  power  which 
makes  life  most  deeply  sacramental  is  its  new 
creation  by  Christ.  The  eternal  life  that 
Christ's  Cross  won  for  us  in  the  Eternal 
Spirit  acts  on  us  so  timelessly  that  it  can  give 
the  meanest  life  the  eloquence  of  the  spiritual 
world.  It  makes  it  that  it  can  be  not  only  an 
object  but  a  channel  of  supernatural  blessing, 
and  not  only  a  channel  but  a  medium.  That 
miraculous  power  which  turns  the  historic 
Christ  from  a  memory  to  be  the  most  real 
presence,  and  even  constituent,  of  our  life 
to-day,  that  power  which  makes  Him  Who  is 
so  far  off  the  most  near,  and  changes  the  tem- 
poral to  the  eternal  —  that  is  what  makes  the 
true  sacramental  power  in  life,  and  transfig- 
ures it  with  the  glow  of  something  that  lifts 
it  and  lights  it  for  ever.  Nothing  makes  the 
poor  man's  toil  so  full  of  worth  and  price  as 
the  work*  of  Christ  the  Spirit.  Nothing  so 
lifts  into  eternal  significance  the  loves,  sor- 
rows, drudgeries,  tragedies  of  the  poor  men 
of  the  dull  fields.  It  has  done  it  in  cases  in- 
numerable. Nothing  so  makes  them  know 
themselves,  and  seem  to  others,  to  be  worlds 
78 


VIII  LIFE  A  SACRAMENT 

more  than  atoms  bubbling  in  a  seething  cal- 
dron, or  drifting  in  a  desert  dust,  whirled 
in  a  universe  of  meaningless  sound  and  fury. 
Such  certainty  as  Christ  can  give,  and  does 
give,  of  a  life  beyond  life  by  our  partnership 
of  it  in  Him  fills  the  humblest  soul  with  such 
power  and  price  that  the  men  of  genius  can 
neither  fathom  it  (though  they  feel  it)  nor 
can  they  give,  far  less  guarantee,  that  which 
they  may  divine  of  its  wealth.  The  common- 
est life  means  worlds  both  Godward  and  man- 
ward.  That  is  the  sacramentality  of  life. 
The  most  Christian  poets  are  those  who,  like 
Wordsworth,  Burns,  or  Barnes,  breathe  that 
note  from  huts  where  poor  men  lie.  And 
the  warrant  for  it  is  its  Creator,  its  new  Cre- 
ator —  the  power  of  the  Eternal  spirit  by 
which  that  poor  man  Christ  Himself  won 
the  endless  victory  over  time,  death,  and  the 
world.  The  simple  have  known  that  as  they 
could  know  nothing  else.  And  it  made  life 
for  them,  and  for  all  who  could  read  them 
aright,  because  they  shared  the  same  faith, 
full  of  staying  power,  mystic  eloquence,  and 
conclusive  bliss. 

"  Grave  in  the  sight  of  God  is  the  death  of 
His  loyal  and  loving  ones.'* 


79 


CHAPTER  IX 

IMMORTALITY  AND  THE  KINGDOM  OF  GOD 

Absence  from  able  publicists  of  either  idea.  But  the 
only  perfection  is  in  a  common  realm  and  a  common 
King. 

We  have  admitted  that  the  belief  in  another 
life  has  been  cherished  on  lines  so  Individual 
that  its  effect  on  this  life  has  really  been  to 
increase  the  natural  egoism  instead  of  con- 
cealing it.  That  has  happened  because  it  has 
been  dismoralized  —  first,  because  the  notion 
of  eternal  life  has  dropped  to  that  of  endless 
life,  and  second,  because  it  has  been  narrowed 
down  from  the  idea  of  the  Kingdom  of  God. 
It  is  on  this  latter  that  I  would  now  dwell. 

The  Kingdom  is  more  than  a  social  idea, 
but  as  a  social  Idea  it  dominates  the  synop- 
tics. In  the  Epistles  it  retains  its  social  note 
as  the  ideal  Church.  In  the  fourth  Gospel 
it  appears  more  mystically,  and  therefore 
more  individually,  as  eternal  life.  To  put 
it  technically,  the  eschatology  becomes  a  tran- 
scendency, and  the  last  things  are  not  simply 
the  end  things  but  the  ground  things,  the 
dominants.  As  the  Church  went  on  to  grow 
more  external  and  egoist  this  idea  shared 
in  the  fall.  Both  the  Kingdom  and  its  eter- 
80 


THE  KINGDOM  OF  GOD 

nal  life  became  debased  by  contact  with  the 
paganism  they  overcame.  But  now  we  are 
returning  to  the  larger  and  holler  note.  The 
Kingdom  of  God  Is  the  emergence  Into  the 
life  of  history,  both  by  growth  and  crisis,  of 
that  saving  sovereignty  which  Is  the  moral 
power  and  order  of  the  spiritual  world.  The 
coming  of  the  Kingdom  Is  the  growth  or  the 
inroad  of  God's  Will  on  earth  to  be  what  it 
always  Is  In  peace  and  glory  In  Heaven.  I 
am  thinking  of  what  we  have  in  the  very 
opening  of  the  Lord's  Prayer,  where  the 
phrase  "  as  In  heaven  so  on  earth  "  belongs 
to  each  of  the  three  first  petitions,  and  not 
only  to  its  next  neighbor.  *'  Hallowed  be 
Thy  Name"  as  In  Heaven  so  on  Earth; 
*'  Thy  Kingdom  come  "  as  In  Heaven  so  on 
Earth.  As  If  It  should  say,  "  There  Is  a 
realm  at  the  heart  of  things  where  all  Is 
already  won  and  well,  all  Is  Yea  and  Amen. 
And  access  to  It  Is  not  barred  to  faith  on 
earth.  And  it  is  the  real  workshop  of  his- 
tory." Our  commerce  with  that  country 
alters  much,  the  whole  complexion  of  our 
social  discussion  changes,  when  we  seek  to 
measure  and  adjust  all  things  by  their 
obedience  to  this  power  and  their  move- 
ment to  this  goal.  All  changes  its  note  and 
method  when  we  seek  first  that  Kingdom. 
That  Is  the  new  creation  in  which  dwells  im- 
mortality. 

8i 


THIS  LIFE  AND  THE  NEXT     chap. 

Now  it  is  quite  true  that  to-day  there  is 
better  thinking  and  writing  on  social  or  na- 
tional subjects  than  there  ever  was  in  the 
world  before.  It  is  writing  also  much  ruled 
by  the  ethical  note.  But  even  the  best  of  it 
is,  for  the  most  part,  less  than  historic  in  its 
range,  and  it  moves  only  in  the  middle  reg- 
ister of  thought.  Its  eye  is  not  on  the  history 
of  the  whole  soul.  And  it  represents  spir- 
itually neither  revolt  nor  faith,  but  indiiier- 
ence  (probably  more  apparent  than  real). 
It  is  not  for  God's  enemies,  but  neither  is  it 
for  God  as  it  is  for  man.  To  read  it  you 
would  not  guess  that  we  were  in  a  Christian 
country  with  a  long  Christian  tradition  shap- 
ing its  society.  You  would  receive  the  im- 
pression that  its  rehgion  had  no  more  to  do 
with  affairs  than  a  harem,  that  it  is  kept  be- 
hind the  purdah.  In  all  the  able  and  inter- 
esting speculation  of  the  pubhcists  about 
either  the  causes  or  the  consequences  of  the 
present  convulsion,  it  is  one  of  the  most  sig- 
nificant things  that  hardly  any  reference  is 
made  to  the  eternal  Kingdom  of  God,  rang- 
ing from  earth  to  heaven;  and  no  express 
guidance  is  taken  from  distinctive  principles 
of  the  Kingdom's  ethic.  Insistence  on  a 
world-righteousness,  and  to  judgment  accord- 
ingly, is  treated  as  an  outburst,  more  or  less 
amusing,  of  obsolete  Puritanism.  If  such  be 
the  mark  of  civilization,  and  if  the  Kingdom 
82 


IX  THE  KINGDOM  OF  GOD 

of  God  yet  be  the  fundamental  nisus  in  and 
under  all  the  civilizations,  it  must  be  that  of- 
fense comes  and  war.  Our  social  science  is 
written  as  our  novels  are  —  as  if  there  were 
no  such  thing  among  the  powers  of  life  as  the 
Kingdom  of  God  and  its  religion,  as  if  re- 
ligion were  not  the  ruling  passion  of  the  race 
(to  say  nothing  of  its  contents  being  the  key 
of  history),  as  if  a  supreme  regard  to  an 
eternal  life  made  no  vital  difference  to  the 
conduct  of  life.  All  is  written  as  if  the  power 
which  has  done  the  most  to  make  history  was 
an  illusion  now  outgrown,  as  if  the  Kingdom 
of  God  were  a  superstition  of  pietists  in  holes 
and  corners,  or  a  fragment  of  theologians 
who  mistook  for  effective  realities  certain 
fantasies  of  the  first  century.  Any  thinker 
would  be  more  or  less  discredited  with  the 
leading  writers  on  social  or  political  questions, 
however  profound  an  historian,  if  he  an- 
nounced that  he  was  to  measure  everything  In 
the  light  of  the  principle  of  Christ's  estab- 
lished Kingdom  of  God  emerging  into  human 
affairs.  Even  with  the  far  flung  monitions 
and  deep  old  judgments  of  the  war  booming 
in  our  ears  that  is  so.  Reconstruction  in  its 
wake  Is  approached  with  a  mind  which  seems 
to  have  no  sense  of  any  but  economic  or  phil- 
anthropic quantities.  The  treatment  of  the 
war  as  a  function  of  judgment  by  that  King- 
dom on  a  whole  civilization  which  ignores  it 
83 


THIS  LIFE  AND  THE  NEXT     chap. 

would  be  regarded  as  a  piece  of  pulpit  fustian 
which  the  preacher  has  sunk  to  be  expected 
to  say.  And  that  means  that  religion,  the 
deepest  religion,  and  especially  the  religion 
of  the  long  future,  is  regarded  (if  at  all) 
but  as  a  private  affair,  but  there  is  no  idea 
of  eternity  as  the  greatest  of  public  interests 
and  public  powers,  but  that  we  can  best  pre- 
pare citizens  for  life  by  teaching  civics. 
There  is  no  sense  of  a  Church  as  the  trustee 
of  man's  last  social  weal,  nor  of  the  reign  of 
a  holy  God  as  active  and  decisive  in  our  com- 
mon life.  When  you  begin  discussing  the 
Church  with  such  people  they  discuss  Church- 
men; just  as  when  I  criticize  democracy  I  am 
often  tripped  up  with  the  fatuous  remark 
what  capital  fellows  the  trades'  union  leaders 
are.  But  no  judgment  can  be  really  recog- 
nized as  such,  it  cannot  be  recognized  as  a 
movement  of  the  Kingdom  of  God,  and  a  sol- 
emn effect  of  its  righteousness,  except  by  a 
conscience  taught  by  God.  Calamity  on  a 
worldly  soul  but  hardens  it.  And  the  fool 
brayed  in  a  mortar  is  a  shrewd  fool  still. 

Now,  since  that  is  so,  the  chief  public  work 
of  the  Church  as  the  trustee  of  eternal  life, 
and  the  way  to  its  recovery  of  public  influ- 
ence in  this  life,  must  be  so  to  acquire  the  deep 
historic  conscience  of  the  holy  as  to  evange- 
lize with  its  righteousness  the  corporate  na- 
tion and  not  only  the  souls  in  it;  to  create 
84 


K  THE  KINGDOM  OF  GOD 

public  repentance  and  new  purpose;  to  Chris- 
tianize political  conduct;  to. press  the  reality 
of  the  Kingdom  of  God  in  history  and  affairs; 
to  make  it  the  dominant  it  was  for  the  Person 
who  has  most  molded  history;  and  to  do  this 
in  such  a  way  that  it  shall  not  only  become 
credible  but  luminous  for  public  life  —  at 
least  with  those  for  whom  the  moral  interest 
of  society  Is  supreme.  Much  of  the  current 
talk  about  the  Church's  duty  after  the  war 
where  it  Is  not  pietism  Is  journalism,  mostly 
empiric,  the  work  of  people  who  have  no  spe- 
cial preparation,  no  serious  discipline  In  ethic, 
history,  philosophy,  ol*  theology  for  such 
matters,  but  are  taken  from  some  other  job 
for  this.  People  who  have  no  real  part  or 
lot  in  the  Church  are  very  eager  to  exploit  it 
as  an  asset  for  some  vague  ideal.  They 
know  much  In  a  way,  but  not  in  a  way  to 
teach  them  that  the  Church  has  made  modern 
history.  And  they  vindicate  their  claim  to 
be  realists  ''  without  any  nonsense  "  by  call- 
ing on  the  Church  to  change  front  with  every 
new  formation  of  social  phases  and  public 
events,  just  as  they  would  urge  the  House  of 
Commons.  The  Church  may  only  change 
front  in  so  far  as  It  can  do  so  without  chang- 
ing its  ground.  And  when  it  comes  to  select- 
ing the  time  and  type  of  change,  the  Church 
has  really  no  more  fools  In  It  than  literature 
or  business.  But  more  and  more  the  Church 
85 


THIS  LIFE  AND  THE  NEXT    chap. 

must  feel  that  Its  ground  Is  the  Kingdom  of 
God  set  up  by  the  moral  and  creative  crisis 
for  history  of  the  Cross  of  Christ.  The  real 
ground  of  a  Christian  belief  In  the  soul's 
future  and  the  future  of  humanity  Is  the  re- 
ality of  God's  Kingdom  there  put  In  action 
as,  in  a  new  creation,  planting  heaven,  found- 
ing earth,  and  leading  history  (Isaiah  II.  i6), 
there  put  Into  subtle  control  of  human  affairs, 
and  made  the  goal  of  human  history  as  the 
new  destiny  of  each  soul.  It  Is  true  all  the 
same  that  If  the  Church  realized  as  It  should 
Its  own  ground.  Its  first  concern  might  be  the 
less  bustling  but  more  biting  task  of  its  own 
reconstruction.  One  is  amazed  at  the  naive 
facility  with  which  it  devises  machinery  for 
the  new  situation  without  a  misgiving  that 
that  situation  is  largely  due  to  a  defect,  not 
to  say  a  falsity.  In  Its  own  grasp  of  the  Gos-. 
pel,  which  calls  for  something  like  a  conver- 
sion In  itself  as  the  preacher. 

Our  preoccupation  with  the  Interests  of 
another  life  (I  have  said)  may  be  of  a  degree 
or  kind  to  damage  the  soul  It  would  save,  and 
the  Kingdom  It  should  serve.  It  may  encour- 
age the  same  egoism  which  is  the  ruling 
power  In  civilization,  which  is  bound  to  quar- 
rel with  the  movement  of  the  Kingdom,  and 
which  It  Is  the  work  of  a  real  revelation  to 
convert  or  destroy.  I  mean  by  egoism  prof- 
iteering in  religious  things  to  the  loss  of  pub- 
86 


DC  THE  KINGDOM  OF  GOD 

lie  soul;  and  by  a  real  revelation  I  mean  a 
revelation  which  redeems  even  more  than  it 
reveals,  plants  us  on  a  new  center,  and 
changes  our  conscience  much  more  than  our 
conceptions.  In  an  ethical  religion  which 
is  also  social  the  immortality  of  a  personal 
being  is  valuable  as  an  increase  of  life  for 
others,  and  especially  for  God  and  His  King- 
dom. If  we  are  more  they  are  more.  The 
very  Fathers  are  not  perfect  till  we  Sons  of 
the  later  day  come  in  (a  fact  which  should 
end  the  tyrrany  of  patristics).  By  a  per- 
verted religion  we  can  overdo  the  care  of  our 
souls,  which  we  have  to  master  and  not  to 
fuss,  and  which  is  in  better  hands  than  ours; 
but  we  cannot  be  too  much  occupied  with  the 
Kingdom  of  God  and  our  lot  there.  This  is 
a  more  vital  doctrine  for  Christianity  than 
the  immortality  of  the  soul,  because  it  includes 
it.  The  historic  righteousness,  the  holiness 
of  God,  which  makes  His  Kingdom,  is  an  in- 
finitely greater  matter  than  the  realization 
of  the  superior  self.  Indeed,  is  there  any 
hope  of  our  coming  to  our  own,  our  ownest 
own,  in  life  except  as  God  does  Who  is  our 
life,  and  Whose  own  we  are?  We  cannot 
truly  or  finally  realize  ourselves  except  in  the 
service  and  spread  of  the  Kingdom  of  God. 
(Only  let  us  not  be  too  self-conscious  in  this 
matter  of  service.  The  man  who  is  always 
fussing  about  his  duty  needs  our  vigilance.) 
S7 


THIS  LIFE  AND  THE  NEXT     chap. 

It  is  this  Kingdom  which  is  the  standard  of 
all  progress,  and  the  test  by  which  we  tell  it 
from  degeneration.  It  is  only  to  this  service 
that  all  else  is  added,  and  especially  moral 
growth.  That  is  to  say  only  in  the  active 
love  and  service,  not  simply  of  God,  but  of 
the  Kingdom  of  God  and  His  Christ,  are  the 
full  powers  of  the  soul  released  and  its  re- 
sources plumbed.  The  Kingdom  of  God  is 
only  another  phrase  for  the  energetic  fullness 
of  man's  eternal  life  —  here  or  hereafter. 
It  involves  a  millennium,  the  moral  organiza- 
tion of  society  in  considerate  sympathy,  but 
it  is  much  more.  It  is  the  greatest  object  in 
the  world;  and  life's  chief  end  is  not  even  the 
highest  stage  or  phase  of  itself,  but  to  glorify 
and  to  enjoy  for  ever  in  His  realm  a  God 
of  holy  love.  Without  such  a  goal  and  its 
service  there  is  nothing  to  keep  alive  in  us 
always  a  living  sensibility  of  feeling  or  imag- 
ination —  as  there  is  nothing  without  it  to 
bind  the  nations  together  by  their  conscience. 
That  is  the  Kingdom  of  God,  which  is  more 
than  His  Kingdom. 

It  has  been  said,  in  a  slashing  way  which 
impresses  some,  that  amid  our  present  cir- 
cumstances the  only  choice  open  to  Society  is 
between  Utopia  and  Hell.  But  what  is 
Utopia,  and  how  reach  it?  How  pass  from 
the  mere  anomalies  of  Society  to  the  paradox 
of  moral  power  and  peace?  Hell  is  easy; 
88 


IX  THE  KINGDOM  OF  GOD 

and  our  Utopias  are  not  hard;  they  kindle  us 
easily.  But  this  is  hard.  For  these  cannot 
bring  themselves  to  pass.  We  slide  down, 
but  we  have  to  struggle  up.  And  where  are 
we  to  find  the  power  to  climb,  or  the  guid- 
ance? We  must  be  carried,  for  we  cannot 
go.  We  faint  and  fail  till  we  wait  on  the 
Lord.  The  soul  in  due  course  subsides  on 
itself,  and  its  prospects  starve  and  shrivel; 
but,  forgetting  itself  in  God's  Kingdom  after 
a  godly  sort,  the  soul  rises  to  the  righteous- 
ness of  it  and  all  its  rich  entail.  Here  in  our 
present  life  we  are  not  what  it  is  in  us  to  be 
because  of  the  limitations  which  beset  us 
within  and  without.  Each  stunted  soul  is  a 
drag  upon  every  other.  We  cannot  love  each 
other  as  we  should,  nor  even  as  we  long  to 
do,  because  of  something  that  lies  on  us  like 
frost,  and  ties  us  with  invisible  threads.  We 
cannot  move  as  we  would.  Or  if  we  do,  at 
the  first  step  to  our  neighbor's  heart  our  foot 
is  frozen  by  reserve,  or  it  stumbles  on  his  in- 
visible fence.  And  this  may  be  so  even  with 
those  who  are  nearest  us.  But  in  a  life  of 
eternal  reconciliation,  which  is  not  sympa- 
thetic only  but  constructive,  which  is  not  a 
kinder  family  only  but  a  godller  Kingdom, 
it  will  be  otherwise.  We  shall  not  lose  our 
Individuality,  but  the  barriers  will  fall  down 
in  a  spiritual  telepathy  and  tact.  We  shall 
talk  across  our  fences.  For  the  features  of 
89 


THIS  LIFE  AND  THE  NEXT    chap. 

our  Idiosyncrasy,  the  physiognomy  of  our 
soul,  limits  though  they  be,  are  not  limita- 
tions. They  are  frontiers  and  not  barriers. 
They  make  contour  and  character,  not  insula- 
tion. The  individual,  as  he  becomes  a  living 
person,  has  powers  infinitely  expansible  and 
reciprocal.  As  the  soul  grows  thus  perfect  it 
grows  at  once  more  capacious  and  more  com- 
municative. For  it  is  such  persons  only,  and 
not  mere  individuals,  that  can  interpenetrate. 
Each  has  wealth  to  give,  and  room  to  receive 
the  rest.  We  grow  by  such  mutual  Inter- 
penetration.  Hearts  swell  into  each  other. 
We  assimilate  each  other.  We  know  as  we 
are  known.  Wci  live  ourselves  Into  each 
other.  We  rise  to  each  other,  or  we  stoop 
to  rise.  None  without  the  rest  can  be  made 
perfect.  And  the  common  perfection  Is 
guaranteed  by  the  Kingship  of  an  indwelling 
God.  Our  powers  increase  there  by  much 
more  than  addition.  And  that  more  Is  what 
makes  a  meeting  a  Church  —  it  Is  the  Holy 
Ghost.  The  new  creation  Is  a  new  combina- 
tion of  the  old  powers,  with  an  eternal  life 
as  the  secret  of  the  blend. 

But  the  longer  we  dwell  on  this  new  life, 
and  dispose  ourselves  to  it,  so  much  the  more 
we  Inhabit  another  world.  And  the  change, 
the  reaction  on  our  life,  is  great  as  we  live 
such  another  world  into  this.  We  acquire 
both  the  devout  Hfe  and  the  brotherly.  The 
90 


IX  THE  KINGDOM  OF  GOD 

immortality  of  the  soul  can  only  be  realized 
as  our  part  and  lot  In  an  Immortal  fellowship 
deeply  active  every  day.  This  is  what  saves 
it  from  being  an  egoist  burden  or  a  bore. 
But  It  is  first  a  fellowship  of  Christ.  To 
preach  the  Kingdom  without  preaching  the 
knowledge  of  Christ  may  be  still  to  serve 
Him;  but  to  preach  It  with  an  ostentatious 
silence  about  Him  Is  of  Antichrist.  The  one 
is  the  twilight  of  the  morning,  the  other  of 
the  evening. 


91 


CHAPTER  X 

IMMORTALITY  AND  REDEMPTION 

The  theology  of  it  and  the  psychology.  The  ethic  of  it. 
The  holy  the  guarantee  of  the  eternal.  The  diflFer- 
ence  of  faith  and  experience. 

All  this  goes  to  hint  that  it  is  not  quite 
satisfactory  to  speak  so  much  of  the  soul's 
immortality  when  we  speak  of  its  future. 
For,  as  I  say,  if  that  mean  an  immortality 
native  and  intrinsic  to  it,  it  may  be  but  an  ex- 
pended egoism.  Or  else  we  are  leaving  out 
those  souls  in  whom  the  passion  to  bless  oth- 
ers becomes  ready  to  be  shut  out  from  the 
presence  of  God  and  a  share  in  His  eternity. 
Is  it  not  better,  then,  to  have  less  to  say  about 
the  soul's  immortality  and  more  about  God's 
new  creation  —  less  about  a  life  in  heaven 
or  hell  and  more  about  life  in  Christ  or  with- 
out Him?  We  can  be  more  sure  about  the 
new  creation  than  about  the  natural  immor- 
tality of  the  soul.  I  do  not  wish  to  prejudge 
the  question  about  conditional  immortality. 
But  I  venture  to  suggest  that  for  religious 
purposes  it  is  better  to  approach  the  matter 
theologically  than  psychologically,  in  terms 
of  the  first  creation  and  the  second,  of  nature 
92 


IMMORTALITY 

and  grace.  These  theological  terms  are  bet- 
ter, surer,  more  objective  than  the  terms 
which  do  not  go  beyond  aspirations,  premo- 
nitions, tendencies,  probabilities,  which  have 
no  real  leverage  on  life,  or  at  least  do  not 
give  it  footing,  and  are  apt  to  become  but 
pursuits,  or  even  hobbies,  of  leisure.  Our 
immortality  is  the  new  work  of  God  on  us 
rather  than  the  continuation  of  a  psychical 
process,  the  uncoiling  of  an  infinite  spring, 
or  the  fruition  of  a  spiritual  tendency.  Im- 
mortality is  a  gift,  a  creation.  We  do  not 
simply  arrive;  we  are  invited  and  we  are 
fetched.  As  the  second  creation  it  is  more 
of  a  creation  than  the  first.  For  it  is  crea- 
tion not  out  of  a  chaos  but  a  wreck.  It  is 
the  recreation  of  a  decreation.  Our  perfec- 
tion (though  it  is  anything  but  an  annexe) 
is  more  created  from  us,  than  developed  out 
of  us.  We  are  born  again  into  an  uncreated 
world,  as  the  first  birth  placed  us  in  a  world 
created.  And  the  moral  thereof  for  life  is 
that  we  grow  more  perfect  when  we  dwell 
upon  what  we  may  receive  rather  than  on 
what  we  may  become,  and  when  we  conquer 
our  recalcitrance  and  not  merely  our  inertia. 

When  I   speak  of  our  immortality  as  a 

work  of  God  I  do  not  necessarily  mean  a 

sharply  and  obviously  miraculous  act.     And 

I  certainly  do  not  speak  of  a  wing  added  on 

93 


THIS  LIFE  AND  THE  NEXT     chap. 

to  us,  a  donum  superadditum.  That  is  not 
how  a  personality  is  regenerated.  It  is  not 
even  how  it  grows.  But  I  would  go  deeper 
than  any  thaumaturgy,  and  think  of  the  way 
the  new  creation  is  related  to  the  old.  We 
do  not  pass  from  the  one  to  the  other  by 
a  jolt,  radical  and  revolutionary  as  the  change 
is.  The  old  life  and  the  new  are  not  parted 
by  a  bottomless  pit.  It  is  a  constitutional 
revolution.  I  mean  God  did  not  create  the 
first  world  of  nature  without  reference  to  the 
second  of  grace.  His  grace  is  not  but  a  new 
strategy  to  save  us  an  unforeseen  reverse. 
He  did  not  give  us  a  natural  freedom  without 
knowing  that  He  had  in  reserve  freer  re- 
sources still,  which  were  more  than  able  to 
recover  any  abuse  of  it.  He  had  the  new 
creation  in  view  when  He  issued  the  first. 
The  second  was  provided  for  in  the  first,  and 
we  are  to  live  the  first  in  the  interest  of  the 
second.  Though  nature  cannot  of  itself  cul- 
minate in  grace,  at  least  it  was  not  put  there 
without  regard  to  grace.  Grace  is  Nature's 
destiny.  We  are  born  to  be  saved.  The 
soul  that  in  its  freedom  threw  away  with  its 
freedom  its  immortality  and  its  God  yet  was 
not  thrown  out  of  the  compass  of  redemption 
and  regeneration.  Any  immortality  worth 
having  is  always  of  God's  grace;  it  is  not  a 
matter  of  going  on  and  still  to  be.  It  is  not 
a  mere  realization  of  a  created  self  but  a 
94 


X  IMMORTALITY 

resQue  of  it.  The  soul's  true  destiny  is  not 
achieved  under  God's  benevolence;  it  is  be- 
stowed by  His  grace.  If  it  go  on  and  on 
it  is  not  because  of  its  own  implanted  energy, 
but  because  of  the  ever  new  creative  action 
of  Him  Who  is  the  source  of  fresh  value 
more  than  of  continued  being,  and  Who 
makes  life  not  only  long  but  precious.  If 
we  think  only  of  the  soul's  immortality  we 
shall  be  bandied  to  and  fro  by  diverse  pre- 
sumptions. But  if  we  think  of  an  incessant 
new  creation  as  the  source  of  the  new  life 
by  a  new  birth,  then  our  whole  soul's  habit 
will  settle  from  the  oscillations  of  self  on  the 
fidelity  of  God,  or  the  constancy  of  the  divine 
Energy,  or  the  faithfulness  of  the  new  Cre- 
ator. The  one  is  the  way  of  reflection  and 
its  presumptions,  the  other  of  faith  and  its 
certainty.  And  it  makes  all  the  difference 
to  life  which  of  these  is  our  ruling  note. 
Only  one  of  them  makes  a  thing  really  and 
finally  religious  out  of  the  life  we  would  pro- 
long. The  fidelity  of  God  will  mean  more 
for  our  destiny  than  the  simplicity  of  the 
soul,  its  indissoluble  simplicity,  and  certainly 
more  than  its  constancy.  His  Holiness,  and 
the  constancy  which  in  Him  is  fidelity,  is  the 
warrant  of  our  personality.  Nothing  can 
separate  us  from  the  holy  love  of  God  In 
Christ.  And  nothing  but  the  faith  of  that 
love  enables  us  to  say  that. 
95 


THIS  LIFE  AND  THE  NEXT    chap. 

We  do  not  believe  the  greatest  things  on 
the  ground  of  experience,  but  only  In  the 
medium  of  experience,  by  way  of  an  experi- 
ence, by  a  miracle  of  the  Spirit  which  takes 
place  only  in  experience,  and  gives  us  our 
Authority.  It  Is  In  that  plane,  though  not 
on  that  ground.  The  matter  of  our  Immor- 
tality Is  one  of  the  cases  where  faith  must 
outrun  experience.  We  cannot  experience 
our  own  Eternity  as  we  can  Christ's.  Our 
faith  Is  in  One  for  whom  there  is  no  after  nor 
before,  to  whom,  therefore,  the  far  future  Is 
already  an  experience,  and  our  destiny  al- 
ready an  achievement.  I  cannot  experience 
the  far  future  (Paul  would  have  said)  by  any 
faith;  but  for  me  to  live  Is  Christ.  My 
career  is  Christ,  the  risen  and  Immortal.  He 
has  subdued  everywhere  everything  fatal  to 
my  soul.  Apart  from  Him  there  are  perils 
to  It  I  cannot  conceive.  I  do  not  know.  In 
my  most  religious  moments,  what  may  hap- 
pen to  my  future  In  the  long,  long  course  of 
things.  How  can  I  be  sure  of  an  Eternal 
God,  One  from  whose  hands  nothing  can 
pluck  me  ever?  All  the  religious  are  not. 
How  can  I  tell  that  between  now  and  then 
there  may  not  be  some  fatal  Incursion  upon 
heaven  which  even  the  vast  love  of  God  may 
be  powerless  to  withstand  —  just  as  all  the 
love  my  dearest  spend  on  me  can  not  avert 
my  death  and  parting?  I  may  be  plucked 
96 


X  IMMORTALITY 

from  His  hand,  as  lives  here  are  snatched 
away  from  our  love  unspeakable.  Is  God's 
unspeakable  love  also  invincible?  That  is 
the  question.  Is  He  able  to  keep  what  I 
trust  to  Him?  I  have  no  means  of  being 
sure  about  this,  nor  can  I  live  as  if  I  were, 
unless  I  know  and  experience  Christ;  unless 
I  know  Him  not  simply  as  the  Lover  of  my 
soul  but  as  the  Victor  for  it  for  ever,  nay, 
the  very  constituent  of  it;  unless  His  love  is 
the  Holy  One's  love,  love  absolute.  The 
Christian  revelation  is  not  just  God  is  love, 
but  God's  love  is  omnipotent.  If  I  know 
Him  as  the  final  Redeemer,  who  has  beaten 
down  Satan,  or  all  that  Satan  means,  for  ever, 
I  trust  the  saving  power  of  His  personahty 
as  I  can  never  trust  the  indestructibility  of 
my  own.  To  faith  it  is  more  certain  that  He 
cannot  be  broken  than  that  I  cannot.  He 
cannot  be  broken  short  as  time  might  sud- 
denly cease.  The  holy  nature  and  quality  of 
His  work  for  me,  and  for  man's  whole  des- 
tiny, is  a  mightier  matter  than  mere  duration. 
It  is  only  His  salvation.  His  redemption,  that 
gives  duration  any  moral  value,  any  value  for 
eternity.  But  if  this  is  so,  then  the  belief 
that  it  Is  so  gives  a  distinct  complexion  to 
both  religion  and  life.  The  habit  of  my  soul 
will  be  different,  first.  If  I  believe  in  its  future, 
and  second,  and  still  more,  if  I  believe  In  it 
for  these  reasons  —  reasons  moral  rather 
97 


THIS  LIFE  AND  THE  NEXT 

than  psychological,  more  ethical  than  philo- 
sophical, more  theological  than  ethical,  and 
therefore  more  religious  in  a  religion  of 
moral  redemption  —  reasons  of  faith  more 
even  than  of  hope.  The  foundation  of  the 
moral  is  the  supermoral. 


98 


CHAPTER  XI 

ETERNITY  AND  NEW  BIRTH 

Does  the  great  change  refurbish  or  regenerate?  Do  we 
need  more  a  fuller  life  or  an  altered?  Immortality 
is  the  continuance  less  of  the  soul  than  of  its  change. 
Meaning  of  the  new  creation.  Not  an  annexe,  nor 
a  surrogate,  but  a  reconciliation  of  the  soul.  The 
idea  of  Resurrection  as  the  nexus  of  that  life  and  this. 

The  subject  I  have  In  hand  is  practically  the 
relation  of  Immortality  and  ethic,  of  Chris- 
tian ethic  and  natural,  of  Christ  and  con- 
science. Is  our  immortality  just  a  new  dis- 
covery, or  is  It  a  new  birth?  Is  the  Chris- 
tian conscience  but  the  natural  refined,  or  Is 
it  the  natural  reborn?  Christ's  relation  to 
the  conscience  —  is  it  to  develop  its  culture 
or  to  reconstitute  its  power?  Is  it  to  sub- 
tilize its  acumen,  or  is  it  to  give  it  a  new  qual- 
ity and  a  new  principle  corresponding  to  the 
new  center  on  which  it  is  set  and  the  new  life 
which  Christ  now  lives  in  us  —  a  life  new 
in  proportion  as  He  is  of  God  more  than  of 
man?  Is  conscience  the  voice  of  God,  or 
(more  humbly)  the  ear  which  may  hear  it? 
The  work  of  Christ  —  Is  it  refurbishing  or 
regeneration?  Is  our  key  changed,  or  only 
the  clef?  Is  conversion  but  a  fresh  stimulus, 
99 


THIS  LIFE  AND  THE  NEXT     chap. 

or  is  It  a  real  revolution  in  the  quality  of  the 
moral  life,  the  source  of  its  power,  and  the 
direction  of  its  movement?  Is  the  new  birth 
but  a  somewhat  exaggerated  metaphor  for 
a  new  departure,  for  turning  over  a  new 
leaf?  Is  the  passage  from  the  natural  to  the 
eternal  life  but  an  ascent  of  the  spiritual  na- 
ture, or  is  it  a  leap  and  a  venture  of  faith? 
These  are  questions  which  are  of  first  mo- 
ment for  the  effect  on  life  of  that  new  birth 
into  our  true  immortality. 

We  hear  of  many  who  are  eating  their 
heart  out  because  circumstances  do  not  allow 
them  a  fuller  life.      But  it  is  not  more  life 
and  fuller  that  we  want.     We  need  a  differ- 
ent life,  a  life  not  simply  with  a  new  light 
on  it  but  a  new  power  in  it  and  a  new  footing 
•  under  it.     We  need  a  new  center,  not  a  trans- 
y  formation  but  a  transposition.     We  need  the 
completion  not  of  the  soul  but  of  its  radical 
1  change.     The  growing  spiritual  life,  and  not 
:the  natural,  goes  on  beyond  the  greatest  of 
its  crises,  in  death,  and  goes  on  reversing  its 
past  all  the  time.     That  goes  on  into  which 
we  are  being  changed  as  personality  grows 
by  a  constant  revolution  in  our  egoism.      (I 
refer  to  the  allusion  to  Paulsen  in  Chap.  IV.) 
If  life  goes  on  for  ever.  It  goes  on  coming 
round  full  circle,  and  reflecting  an  absolute 
change,  an  inversion  of  values  which  are  pres- 
aged in  the  moral  estimates  of  age  compared 

lOO 


XI      ETERNITY  AND  NEW  BIRTH 

with  youth.  If  it  is  an  absolute  change,  that 
means  life  going  on  for  ever  in  an  ascending 
spiral  where  looking  back  is  looking  down. 
For  the  eternal,  in  the  qualitative  sense  of  rich 
life  and  full,  could  not  continue  such  if  it  did 
not  include  the  quantitative  also  of  long  life, 
and  time  to  work  itself  out.  Grace  would 
then  simply  be  irrelevant  to  nature,  and  not 
related  at  all.  Nothing  can  ensure  to  us 
indestructible  being  except  a  power  which 
deHvers  us,  by  a  higher  way  than  mere  per- 
sistence, from  the  mutations  of  time  or 
space  —  which  delivers  us  from  their  de- 
moralization. Only  what  is  eternal  in  the 
moral  sense  could  ensure  eternity  in  the  tem- 
poral sense,  for  "  morality  is  the  nature  of 
things."  Eternity  is  time  not  simply  pro- 
longed, nor  only  sublimated,  but  hallowed, 
morally  regenerated  for  the  holy.  That 
which  protects  us  from  time  is  that  which 
delivers  us  from  evil.  So  the  kingdom  of 
an  endless  heaven  is  the  Kingdom  of  a  holy 
God.  And  it  is  the  fruit  not  of  Chris tus 
Consummator  but  of  Christus  Redemptor, 

I  dwell  on  this  to  point  out  that  any  discus- 
sion of  Christian  ethic  which  does  not  start 
with  moral  regeneration  is  by  so  much  the 
less  Christian.  In  the  Christian  faith  "  we 
die  but  once,  but  we  are  born  twice."  Im- 
mortality is  precious  as  the  continuance  of 
that  which  has  set  life  in  quite  another  than 

lOI 


THIS  LIFE  AND  THE  NEXT     chap. 

the  natural  key,  moved  it  into  a  new  rhythm, 
and  made  its  verdicts  more  than  those  of  the 
natural  judgment  rarefied,  or  the  rational 
just  spiritualized.  It  is  behavior  in  a  new 
dimension.  Have  I  not  said  that  that  is  no 
true,  and  it  is  certainly  no  Christian,  belief 
in  immortality  which  hankers  for  a  life  after 
death  just  to  give  the  old  egoism  supernatural 
opportunities,  and  to  furnish  the  old  desires 
with  superior  facilities  for  getting  their  head 
and  their  bread?  Did  not  even  the  Phari- 
sees likewise?  They  believed  in  a  resurrec- 
tion, but  not  in  immortality  as  Christ  under- 
stood it.  For  him  newness  of  life  meant 
more  than  a  return  to  life,  for  however  long; 
it  meant  a  new  order  of  life  and  love.  But 
for  them  it  only  meant  a  better  chance  for 
the  old  passion;  it  meant  just  making  good 
the  damage  in  earth's  disappointments;  it  did 
not  necessarily  mean  a  higher  stage  of  aspira- 
tion, or  a  change  of  quality  in  the  desire. 
They  need  not  be  born  again,  as  even  their 
best,  like  Nicodemus  or  Hillel,  must  from 
Christ's  point  of  view.  Their  divine  future 
meant  but  the  happier  perpetuating  of  such 
national  and  social  ambitions  as  filled  the 
horizon  of  many  a  zealot  in  his  public  career. 
Christ  thought  of  a  new  heaven  and  earth; 
they  thought  of  a  smooth  running  repristina- 
tion,  the  restoring  of  dominion  to  Israel. 
He  thought  of  immortality  as  a  worship; 
1 02 


XI      ETERNITY  AND  NEW  BIRTH 

they  thought  of  It  as  a  reward,  the  return  to 
them,  repaired,  of  what  death  had  taken 
away.  For  Christ  the  true  resurrection  and 
the  true  Immortality  meant  a  new  ethic  born 
of  the  spirit;  for  them  It  was  worldHness  re- 
established and  endowed,  with  security  of 
tenure. 

In  these  remarks  I  have  had  partly  in  view 
the  admirable  book  of  Dr.  Rashdall,  Christ 
and  the  Conscience.  No  book  on  Christian 
ethic  so  good  has  appeared  among  us.  But  I 
cannot  agree  with  Its  religious  foundation. 
The  prolegomena  seems  to  me  to  be  vitiated 
by  the  absence  of  the  idea  of  regeneration  in 
connection  with  Christian  ethic.  I  am  not 
going  to  argue  here  whether  we  are  to  think 
of  regeneration  In  the  baptismal,  and  sub- 
liminal, not  to  say  magical,  way,  or  in  the 
evangelical  and  ethical  way.  It  is  enough 
for  my  present  purpose  to  recognize  that  In 
both  cases  it  represents  a  change  as  real  and 
miraculous  as  grace  and  the  Spirit's  life  must 
always  be.  It  is  not  to  be  identified  with 
sanctification.  Nor  is  it  to  be  reduced  to  a 
development  of  sympathetic  power,  nor  to  a 
culture  of  the  moral  judgment.  Christian 
ethic  is  not  simply  the  top  story  of  all  natural 
ethic.  It  is  supreme  In  another  sense  than 
merely  superlative.  There  Is  a  new  "  crea- 
tive synthesis"  (Wundt).  There  is  an  ele- 
103 


THIS  LIFE  AND  THE  NEXT    chap. 

ment  of  crisis,  and  a  new  life  given.  We 
are  born  into  a  new  world.  We  are  lifted  to 
a  new  plane.  We  ascend  there  in  a  new  at- 
mosphere. When  we  die  it  is  into  an  im- 
mortality which  is  only  a  new  departure  in  the 
old  rebirth  and  its  new  life.  It  is  but  a  new 
grasp  of  the  grace  in  which  we  had  died  to 
nature,  and  yet  in  losing  it  found  it. 

There  is  a  crude  way  of  criticizing  the  idea 
of  a  new  creation  and  reducing  it  to  a  mere 
metaphor  by  asking  whether  the  old  soul  is 
destroyed  and  a  new  identity  put  down  on  its 
site.  We  all  know  that  that  could  not  be. 
It  is  not  even  a  new  wing  built  on.  Of  course 
thejiew  man  must  find_hjsj3oints  of  attach- 
ment in  the~oIdZI)u^_he. cannot  have  his  fo^- 
daton  t-here.  The  truth  is  the  newness  of 
the  new  creature  is  less  in  himself  than  in 
his  tenant.  Christy  live s_in^  him.  And  the 
newness  in  the  man  corresponHs  to  the  new 
and  original  thing  in  Christ.  If  in  Christ 
there  was  nothing  essentially  new,  if  He  was 
but  man  at  his  spiritual  best,  we  could  not  so 
speak.  But  all  that  makes  Him  the  Son  of 
God  goes  to  differentiate  the  new  creature  He 
inhabits.  It  is  a  real  novelty,  it  is  not  a 
fresh  stimulus  that  we  have.  And  if  that  be 
so,  it  means  much  for  the  tone  and  style  of 
our  life.  It  gives  us  a  creative  revelation; 
and  a  fresh  experience  is  not  a  revelation. 
The  new  creation  is  not  in  me  so  much  as  in 
104 


XI      ETERNITY  AND  NEW  BIRTH 

Him  Whose  unique  soul  and  life  inhabits  me 
as  souls  do  souls.  My  knowledge  is  reborn 
beyond  all  science  because  I  am  known  by 
Him  whom  I  know;  my  life  is  reborn  beyond 
all  nature  because  it  is  now  not  lived  by  me 

'  but  lived  into  me.  The  new  master  makes 
the  new  man.  The  relation  of  son  to  God, 
which  is  intrinsic  to  Christ  by  His  nature,  be- 
comes ours  by  His  gift;  we  are  sons  in  Him. 
He  is  Son  in  Himself.  He  is  our  immortal- 
ity. We  do  not  in  the  new  creation  get  a 
new  Identity,  but  a  new  kind  and  quality  of 
moral  power,  a  new  unity  of  soul  by  His 
Reconciliation.     The  new  man  is  the  destruc- 

-  tion  of  the  old  man  as  forgiveness  destroys 
—  forgiveness,  and  not  sheer  oblivion  —  for- 
giveness, which  is  but  the  negative  action 
of  eternal  life  by  a  Reconciliation  drawing 
on  all  the  unity  of  God,  rising,  that  is,  from 
His  holiness.  The  new  thing  In  Christ's  rev- 
elation of  God  was  not  a  new  attribute,  but 
the  unity  in  holy  love  of  all  His  attributes, 
conflicting  before.  It  was  the  revelation  and 
action  of  God  as  holy  in  His  love,  with  all 
that  that  entails.  And  so  the  new  thing  in 
us  is  not  a  new  quality  or  faculty,  but  the 
unity  of  our  warring  selves  and  our  divided 
heart  in  Christ's  name  and  power.  It  is  the 
Reconciliation  with  God  and  ourselves.  It 
Is  the  ^eioV  Tt  in  the  life  of  an  organism  which 
marks  even  a  mollusc  from  a  mosaic,  which 
105 


THIS  LIFE  AND  THE  NEXT     chap. 

no  analysis  can  discern,  no  invention  repro- 
duce, and  no  mere  continuation  create.  It  is 
like  the  unity  in  a  work  of  art,  which  the  best 
copyist  cannot  give.  It  was  thus  that  Shake- 
speare used  Plutarch.  Art  makes  a  chord 
instead  of  a  clang. 

"  I  knew  not  If,  save  in  this,  such  gift  be  allowed 
to  man 
That  out  of  three  sounds  he  frame  not  a  fourth 
sound  but  a  star." 

The  new  and  qualitative  element  in  immor- 
tality is  what  connects  it  with  the  new  birth, 
and  gives  it  the  greatest  of  all  Influences  upon 
our  conduct  of  life,  were  It  only  that  it  forti- 
fies the  will  to  live,  to  say  nothing  of  living  to 
divine  effect.  Our  present  life  is  deepened 
by  such  an  immortality;  whereas  a  mere  in- 
destructibility would  become  a  thin  ghostli- 
ness,  with  an  air  of  Sheol  and  a  Tithonus 
burden.  Love  receives  thus  a  solemnity 
which  guards  it  from  levity,  and  which  fixes 
its  colors  in  fixing  its  destiny.  We  live  and 
love  to  glorify  an  immortal  God  in  Christ. 
We  labor  to  be  accepted  of  Him.  He  har- 
monizes the  passion  for  life  and  the  longing 
for  death.  The  faith  of  a  Christian  immor- 
tality blesses  our  present  life  also  by  taking 
its  concern  off  itself  and  its  interests.  We 
are  not  too  preoccupied  with  our  own  per- 
io6 


XI      ETERNITY  AND  NEW  BIRTH 

sonal  prospects.  We  are  lost  in  the  desire 
of  God's  Kingdom  and  its  fullness.  And 
so  our  very  personal  growth  is  more  free  and 
full.  For  the  self-preoccupied  do  not  grow; 
they  do  not  advance;  they  only  rotate,  and 
wear  their  axis  out.  But  that  is  a  complaint 
which  every  form  of  immortality  will  not 
cure.  An  immortality  that  we  project  from 
ourselves,  as  the  grand  presumption  from  our 
being  what  we  are,  does  not  rid  us  of  that 
egoism.  An  immortality  which  does  not 
proceed  from  God's  gift  in  Christ  Is  but  an 
Imaginative  one,  which  seems  now  sure  now 
dim.  But,  losing  our  souls  in  Him,  we  find 
in  His  eternity  a  life  we  never  found  while 
we  called  our  souls  our  own.  In  union  with 
Him  we  live  in  His  grace,  be  it  here  or  there. 
We  shall  have  a  very  different  interpretation 
of  His  world  and  His  ways  in  it,  a  very  dif- 
ferent theology,  according  as  we  are  thinking 
of  the  release  of  our  powers  or  the  glory  of 
His  grace. 

This  gives  room  for  the  idea  of  Resur- 
rection, whatever  we  may  think  of  Its  form 
or  body.  The  other  life  reacts  on  this  be- 
cause it  is  still,  through  all  crisis  or  miracle^ 
organic  with  it.  And  what  Integrates  the 
other  life  into  this  life's  history  is  the  Idea 
of  resurrection.  The  New  Testament  con- 
nects the  idea  of  immortality  with  that  of 
J07 


THIS  LIFE  AND  THE  NEXT    chap. 

resurrection.  Its  nature  is  given  In  Christ's. 
It  is  not  the  resurrection  of  the  flesh  but  of 
a  body  —  not  of  matter  but  of  form.  Its 
idea  of  resurrection  means  something  very 
much  more  than  the  repristination  of  the  old 
life  under  happier  circumstances.  That,  I 
have  said,  is  but  Jewish,  and  Pharisaist,  and 
Moslem.  It  thought  the  old  desires  were  to 
be  refurbished,  the  old  ambitions  facilitated, 
the  old  life  well  warmed  and  oiled  for  an 
elect.  But  that  was  sheer  egoist  eudaemon- 
ism,  the  cult  of  selfish  happiness  and  individ- 
ual well  being.  It  only  gave  the  old  hunger 
better  cooking.  The  idea  of  Immortality 
had  to  be  moralized.  And  that  was  done 
first,  by  the  notion  of  sanctification  and  per- 
fection, but,  second,  by  the  close  association 
of  these  with  the  new  life  of  past  duty  and 
relation.  The  other  life  was  that  life  going 
on  to  perfection  and  coming  to  itself  in  a 
crisis.  It  was  in  an  organic  moral  connec- 
tion with  this.  Christ  came  back  to  give  ef- 
fect to  what  He  had  done.  He  came  back, 
His  body  (not  His  flesh).  His  person  came 
back  to  be  the  Holy  Spirit  of  all  He  had 
done.  That  Is  the  real  value  of  the  doctrine 
of  resurrection.  It  gives  the  next  life  a  real- 
ism drawn  from  Its  moral  reality  common 
and  continuous  with  this.  Our  life  beyond 
is  in  a  moral  relation  of  causality  with  this. 
Moral  causation  is  broken  as  a  bondage  but 
io8 


XI       ETERNITY  AND  NEW  BIRTH 

not  as  a  power.  We  take  with  us  the  char- 
acter we  made.  All  discussion  of  what  body 
we  come  in  is  beside  the  point;  and  we  have 
no  data.  What  happens  to  this  physical 
body  is  indifferent  to  faith,  and  it  is  left  to 
reverence.  We  are  reverent  to  the  corpse, 
and  not  prudent.  It  will  not  be  wanted 
again.  We  do  not  mummify  our  dead;  we 
even  burn  them.  But  still  the  idea  of  Resur- 
rection is  the  integrating  factor  between  the 
next  life  and  this.  Even  the  new  nature  does 
not  come  per  saltum.  We  return  to  an  old 
haunt.  We  put  on  an  old  fashion  if  not  the 
old  garment.  We  grow  in  the  old  soil.  So 
the  next  life  has  much  effect  on  this  by  making 
the  new  present  of  infinite  worth  and  mo- 
ment. Our  character  here  starts  our  destiny 
there.  This  is  one  of  the  things  that  make 
it  such  an  abuse  to  rely  on  another  life  to 
make  good  our  neglect  here.  The  deliberate 
postponement  of  repentance  here  in  the  hope 
of  doing  it  there  only  deepens  its  unlikeli- 
hood. We  fix  the  impenitent  temper.  We 
return  yonder  to  the  habit  of  putting  off 
which  we  acquired  here. 

It  may  be  added  that,  as  we  pass  into  no 
lone  immortality,  the  social  bearings  of  the 
next  life  on  the  present  are  great.  We  so 
worship  here  as  worshiping  with  the  greater 
part  of  the  One  Church  there  —  the  Unseen. 
109 


THIS  LIFE  AND  THE  NEXT     chap. 

The  dead  are  the  majority;  and  we  are  in 
communion  with  them  in  Christ.  Even  for 
society  outside  the  Church  the  authority  of 
history  means  much.  For  the  dead,  I  say, 
are  the  majority;  and  if  they  are  not  extinct 
they  are  still  in  some  organic  connection  with 
history  and  with  the  present.  The  future  is 
in  some  sense  their  resurrection.  They  re- 
visit us  if  only  in  the  resultants  of  their  deeds. 
And  we  still  meet  in  the  undying  Lord.  In 
Christ  the  past  with  its  souls  means  much  for 
us  and  our  future.  We  are  debtors  both  to 
ancestry  and  posterity,  both  unseen.  We 
live  as  those  who  are  come  to  a  general  as- 
sembly and  Church  of  the  first  born  (for 
the  youngest  dead  are  senior  born  to  us  in 
the  unseen).  We  are  come  to  a  city  of  the 
living  God,  and  a  heavenly  Jerusalem,  and 
an  innumerable  company  of  heavenly  ones. 
And  we  cannot  live  our  public  life  as  if  we 
were  cut  off  from  either  life  or  society  on  the 
other  side.  We  are  all  in  the  one  historic 
purpose  of  God.  We  are  in  the  lower  parts 
of  the  same  Kingdom  of  God,  and  in  the  ad- 
vance battles  of  the  soldiery  of  faith.  The 
dead  still  have  a  vote  where  votes  are  not 
counted  but  weighed.  Let  us  not  ignore 
their  weight,  their  tradition.  In  public  things. 
They  still  belong  to  the  constituency  of  the 
Christ  Whom  we  have  to  put  In  command  of 
no 


YA      ETERNITY  AND  NEW  BIRTH 

affairs.  Ignoble  peace  always  renounces  the 
sacrifices  of  the  noble  dead,  and  still  cruci- 
fies them  afresh. 


Ill 


CHAPTER  XII 

THE  FRUCTIFICATION  OF  FAILURE 

The  future  is  the  fruition  of  failure  here.  Eternity 
holds  the  key  of  history,  the  meaning  of  progress, 
the  interest  of  tears.  All  opens  out  in  that  light. 
The  pathos  of  the  past. 

There  are  those  who  are  not  geniuses,  with 
a  ruling  passion  to  realize  themselves  and  get 
themselves  out,  but  they  have  more  affinity 
with  the  meek  saints,  who  have  striven  for 
souls  without  any  effect  apparent.  To  such 
it  may  come  with  some  cheer  to  remember 
that,  if  death  is  not  a  blight  but  a  blessing,  the 
seed  they  sowed  here  will  be  reaped  yonder. 
As  the  old  Testament  lives  and  works  in  the 
New  so  our  discipline,  long  latent  here,  bears 
fruit  yonder.  Death  is  like  the  leaf  below 
the  Old  Testament  and  New  Testament.- 
Or  as  the  old  Bible  lives  on,  and  lives  larger, 
in  the  growing  Church  so  the  instruction  that 
came  to  little  here  may  yonder  bud  and  seed. 
Christ  died  like  a  corn  of  wheat  sinking  into 
the  ground  to  rot,  but  His  harvest  grows  all 
over  the  world.  So  our  fruitless  efforts  for 
souls  will  germinate  yonder,  as  the  mummy 
wheat  is  said  to  sprout  in  soil  to-day.     His- 

112 


FRUCTIFICATION  OF  FAILURE 

tone  Christianity  is  working  Its  greatest  re- 
sults in  the  unseen  world,  and  far  more 
mightily,  perhaps,  there  than  here,  as  the 
spiritual  climate  is  so  much  more  congenial. 
When  we  are  disappointed  with  the  historic 
results  of  the  Gospel,  and  ask  with  even  de- 
spair. 

"  And  is  the  thing  we  see  Salvation?  " 

the  answer  is  that  it  Is  not,  except  In  process. 
Indeed  the  thing  we  see  most  obviously  to- 
day is  the  result  of  neglecting  God's  salva- 
tion and  kingdom.  But  there  is  a  realm  far 
within  all  that  goes  on  here  where  these 
things  are  not  neglected,  but  are  ruling,  judg- 
ing, and  creative  powers.  The  effects  of 
Christianity  are  greater,  its  salvation  Is 
greater,  where  we  do  not  see  than  where  we 
do.  Which  helps  us  patiently  to  believe  how 
great  they  will  be  in  the  future  and  unseen 
stretch  of  earth's  history.  There  Is  a  region 
where  the  triumph  of  the  cross  is  assured 
and  realized  as  it  is  not  yet  here.  And  our 
contributions  to  it  here  do  not  come  to  their 
fruition  till  they  take  effect  In  a  land  that  is 
their  own.  It  seems  far  off,  but  the  same 
faith  that  works  for  It  sees  It.  If  we  paint 
for  eternity  it  is  eternity  painting  through  us. 
For  after  all  eternity  Is  doing  far  more  for 
time  than  time  is  doing  for  eternity.  "  Time 
113 


THIS  LIFE  AND  THE  NEXT     chap. 

Is  the  mercy  of  Eternity."  Think  of  that 
phrase  of  Blake.  Time  is  there  by  the  initia- 
tive of  Eternity,  by  the  Grace  of  God,  to 
make  Eternity  accessible.  He  forestalls  us 
with  every  good.  We  love  Him  because  He 
first  loved  us,  and  became  incarnate  in  crea- 
tion for  us.  Time  is  not  the  mistake  of 
Eternity.  The  Eternal  did  not  darkly  blun- 
der on  man's  suffering  soul.  The  old  Provi- 
dence does  not  desert  us  when  we  go  out  of 
life's  door.  The  souls  that  go  into  eternity 
know  themselves  as  they  never  did  before. 
The  spirit  is  more  to  them  than  ever  before. 
Their  spiritual  acquirement  while  they  were 
here  opens  out  upon  their  sight.  Think  of 
the  grand  leisure  of  Eternity,  the  leisured 
receptivity  of  soul,  its  feeding  in  a  wise  pas- 
siveness.  How  things  will  break  open  on  us, 
and  be  reconciled.  And  not  only  its  poverty 
but  also  its  wealth  will  be  enriched.  Les- 
sons, facts,  thoughts,  sacrifices,  verses, 
hymns,  that  were  here  overwhelmed  with  the 
life  mean  and  coarse,  stand  out,  open  out, 
fructify,  take  command  there.  Memories 
become  powers.  Old  faces  become  fresh 
blessings.  The  once  dear  becomes  the  ever 
solemn.  Even  if  the  once  despised  become 
terrible  It  is  as  the  terrible  things  In  righteous- 
ness answer  us  from  the  God  of  our  Salva- 
tion. And  all  through  Death.  All  things 
are  In  a  new  light. 

114 


xn      FRUCTIFICATION  OF  FAILURE 

Thou  takest  not  away,  O  Death, 
Thou  strikest;  absence  perisheth, 

Indifference  is  no  more. 
The  future  brightens  on  our  sight, 
For  on  the  past  has  fallen  a  light 

That  tempts  us  to  adore. 

Yes,  the  old  companion  body,  so  mangled 
once,  and  even  so  abused,  and  made  the  serv- 
ant of  sin,  Is  clothed  with  a  new  tenderness 
through  a  new  repentance,  and  the  soul  shall 
still  feel  a  respect  and  affection  for  Its  old 
home.  In  a  theater  once  I  saw  a  packed 
audience  brought  to  a  dewy  silence  like  the 
half  hour  In  heaven,  while  a  young  girl  on 
the  stage  caressed  a  child  to  sleep  with  words 
they  had  all  known  long,  and  memories  they 
had  known  longer  still,  sung  to  a  grave  sweet 
melody. 

O,  the  auld  hoose,  the  auld  hoose. 

What  though  the  rooms  were  sma*, 
How  many  cherished  memories 

Do  they  like  flowers  reca' ! 
The  auld  hoose,  the  auld  hoose, 

Deserted  though  ye  be. 
There  ne'er  can  be  a  new  hoose 

Will  seem  sae  fair  to  me. 

So,  I  thought,  the  spirit  might  look  back 

from    Its    Immortal    repentance    upon    the 

mangled  body  left  on  Flanders  fields,  wherein 

had  grown  up  a  young  soul's  pathetic  tragedy. 

115 


THIS  LIFE  AND  THE  NEXT 

And  the  very  repentance,  not  being  hopeless, 
would  not  be  fierce  but  tender,  and  the  poor 
shieling  of  flesh  would  receive  from  across 
the  misty  seas  of  death  a  reverence  we  knew 
not  while  we  lived  therein. 

And  if  you  complain  that  this  is  sentiment 
and  fancy  I  will  say  it  is  that  and  more.  It 
is  at  least  a  parable  of  what  I  said  was  in 
the  heart  of  the  doctrine  of  resurrection,  of 
the  new  meaning,  effect,  and  dearness  of  all 
that  took  place  in  time,  all  that  came  closest 
to  life,  all  that  was  the  medium  of  experi- 
ence. It  is  a  parable  of  all  the  blessings  we 
misprised,  all  the  monitions  we  ignored,  all 
the  teaching  we  resented,  all  the  discipline 
that  chafed  us,  and  all  the  sacrifices  we  coolly 
took  as  our  due.  The  loving  faces  we  too 
little  loved  will  not  rise  up  to  accuse  us, 
though  their  very  blessings  will  reproach  us. 
They  will  not  reproach,  though  reproach  will 
be  ours.  For  it  is  love's  native  land  this,  its 
song  is  of  mercy  and  justice,  its  very  judg- 
ments are  full  of  grace,  and  its  severities 
make  for  praise.  And  their  past,  through 
which  we  who  are  left  here  are  now  toiling, 
and  struggling,  and  crying,  appears  already 
to  certain  eyes,  for  whom  we  once  worked 
and  wept,  to  be 

"  Ennobled  by  a  vast  regret, 
And  by  contrition  sealed  thrice  sure.'* 
ii6 


CHAPTER  XIII 


L'ENVOI 


To  live  is  Christ,  to  die  is  more  Christ.    We  pass  into  a 
genial    native    land. 

You  cannot  dwell  too  much  on  the  death  and 
resurrection  of  Christ  as  the  revelation  of 
God's  immortal  love,  so  long  as  you  do  not 
hide  the  fact  that  they  are  powers  and  not 
mere  lessons,  and  that  they  make  together 
one  crucial,  final  act  of  divine  majesty  and 
mercy.  They  make  up  the  act  which  is  the 
central  and  unflagging  energy  of  the  world's 
last  reality  as  moral  reality.  They  are  one 
act  of  decisive  and  final  power  at  the  moral 
center  of  the  Universe;  and  that  is  real  om- 
nipotence. Unless  we  can  say  that,  the  cen- 
ter of  our  religion  does  not  coincide  with  the 
center  of  the  moral  cosmos;  our  faith  and 
our  ethic  lead  a  double  life;  and  in  a  religion 
of  universal  and  moral  redemption  that  can- 
not be.  Therefore  Christ  went  out  in  the 
one  grand  moral  activity  of  all  being,  and 
not  in  a  mere  submission,  ^  passivity,  or 
martyrdom.  He  certainly  did  not  simply 
subside  Into  an  allcreating  presence,  as  one 
117 


THIS  LIFE  AND  THE  NEXT    chap. 

vortex  swirls  away  to  make  room  for  an- 
other in  a  vast  sea  which  boils  with  them. 
His  death  and  resurrection  made  the  great- 
est thing  His  great  historic  and  cosmic  per- 
son did.  Nay,  it  was  the  greatest  thing  that 
God  ever  did.  When  God  raised  Christ 
from  the  dead  it  was  the  greatest  of  all  His 
works.  It  was  the  new  creation  of  the 
world.  It  certainly  was  the  greatest  thing 
ever  done  for  the  soul. 

Christ's  death  meant  power  and  victory 
over  sin's  spiritual  guilt  and  moral  bondage; 
His  resurrection  meant  victory  over  sorrow, 
nature,  and  the  bondage  of  the  world.  To- 
gether they  make  a  glory  greater  and  surer 
than  nature's  joy.  More  than  the  morning 
stars  sang  together  at  this  new  creation  — 
the  Father  was  well  pleased.  Nothing  cre- 
ated could  express  the  Holy  Father's  joy  as 
He  found  Himself  In  the  victory  of  His 
equally  holy  Son.  A  new  value  was  given 
to  the  natural  life  from  its  spiritual  Lord. 
It  became  more  active,  more  precious,  and 
dear.  We  learned  to  paint  for  Eternity. 
Clutching  haste  died,  and  crude  feverishness. 
"  I  pass  but  do  not  cease.  I  go  to  those  who 
have  gone.  I  go  to  Him  in  whom  is  no  after 
nor  before,  and  in  whom  all  work  Is  Yea  and 
Amen.  To  die  is  Christ.  It  is  gain  —  gain 
In  reality.  I  go  nearer  to  the  great  reality, 
the  eternal  holy  love.  I  do  not  just  sink  Into 
ii8 


xm  L'ENVOI 

the  Unseen,  I  move  deeper  into  God  and  the 
Kingdom  of  God.  I  see  His  face  I  am 
rapt  into  the  energies  of  the  Eternal  Here 
I  am  not  where  I  should  be,  because  others 
are  not.  But  I  go  where  all  souls  are  filled 
with  Christ;  where  the  public  opinion  is  the 
Holy  Ghost;  where  all  moves  in  righteous- 
ness, service  and  worship."  What  an  ac- 
cession to  our  best  life  here  to  believe  that! 
What  a  gain  to  the  value  of  these  things 
here,  when,  even  if  we  do  lead  a  buried  life, 
it  is  among  the  roots  of  the  fruit  eternal 
where  the  river  of  life  flows  by!  The  same 
Christ  Who  is  the  reality  and  power  of  that 
life  beyond  is  the  reality  and  value  of  this. 
To  live  here  is  to  live  the  Christ  that  rules, 
eternity.     To  die  is  more  of  that  Kingdom. 

Doubt  and  distraction  about  our  destiny 
do  not  stimulate  work  nor  ennoble  feeling, 
though  a  morbid  tenderness  they  may  breed. 
They  kill  work.  They  reduce  it  to  mere 
restlessness.  Mere  activity  Is  not  work. 
We  do  not  then  run  a  race  set  before  us;  we 
dawdle,  or  we  scamper ;  we  flutter  before  pur- 
suing doom  like  a  fowl  before  a  train.  And 
these  uncertainties  about  our  future,  these 
blank  misgivings,  debase  feeling  rather  than 
elevate  it.  But  how  the  revelation  of 
Christ's  eternity  as  ours  has  ennobled  love! 
It  has  given  love  a  new  value  for  the  modern 
119 


THIS  LIFE  AND  THE  NEXT    chap. 

world,  and  yet  made  the  parting  full  of  hope. 
The  more  free  we  are  made  from  life  and 
the  world  the  more  we  find  in  both.  But 
Jubal  was  not  freed,  only  swallowed  up.  He 
was  reabsorbed;  he  was  not  redeemed.  But 
Christian  death  is  the  only  close  which  Is 
more  of  a  beginning  than  an  end. 

The  foundation  of  our  true  immortality  is 
in  a  redemption.  Eternal  Life  is  a  new  gift 
to  us  by  a  new  act,  a  new  creation.  It  is  a 
second  birth.  It  is  not  a  case  of  evolution 
but  of  revolution.  It  is  not  the  development 
of  a  power  or  an  ideal  immanent  to  the  world 
of  Humanity.  It  is  a  gift  of  God,  through 
an  act  of  God.  And  thus  it  is  the  only  means 
of  passing  to  our  moral  perfection.  To 
evade  that  act  of  God  is  to  turn  religion  to  a 
piece  of  aesthetic.  In  an  ethical  religion  we 
are  redeemed.  We  do  not  glide  into  heaven; 
we  are  taken,  not  to  say  plucked,  into  it. 
There  is  no  straight  line  or  smooth  ascent 
to  our  high  places  —  that  is  shown  by  the 
calls  to  severe  self-denial  of  earthly  good.^ 

1  There  is  another  life,  hard,  rough,  and  thorny, 
trodden  with  bleeding  feet  and  aching  brow;  the  life 
of  which  the  cross  is  the  symbol,  a  battle  which  no  peace 
follows  this  side  of  the  grave;  which  the  grave  gapes  to 
finish  before  the  victory  is  won;  and — strange  that  it 
should  be  so  —  this  is  the  highest  life  of  man.  Look 
back  along  the  great  names  of  history;  there  is  none 
whose  life  has  been  other  than  this. —  J.  A.  Froude, 
England's  Forgotten  Worthies. 

1 20 


xni  L'ENVOI 

And  these  calls  join  with  the  uncertainty  of 
judgment  to  make  life  grave,  or  even  tragic, 
as  Eternal  Life  makes  it  great  and  glorious. 
For  our  race  the  Kingdom  of  God  can  only 
come  by  the  Cross,  by  crisis,  by  a  breach  with 
the  natural  life,  though  not  a  disruption  of 
it.  It  Is  this  new  relation  to  a  holy  Creator 
and  His  eternity  that  gives  the  final  value 
to  life's  chief  assets  and  Its  best  dreams. 
Eternal  Life  Is  the  enhancement  and  warrant 
of  human  joy  and  weal.  It  is  the  fixing  of 
its  finest  colors.  It  is  the  last  Amen.  Do 
not  flee  the  world;  overcome  it  by  good. 
"  There  is  no  time  so  miserable  but  a  man 
may  be  true."  The  force  you  have  to  use 
on  yourself  is  really  a  function  of  the  power 
of  new  life  which  carries  you,  an  energy  of 
the  righteous  kingdom.  If  you  break  with 
the  world  it  is  in  the  power  of  the  life  which 
serves  and  saves  it.  If  Christ  live  in  you  all 
humane  affection,  all  love  of  man  or  woman, 
will  be  in  the  service  and  worship  of  God. 
A  new  power  of  service  comes  from  that 
faith.  In  the  vast  certainty  that  Christ  has 
charged  Himself  with  our  Immortality  our 
minds  and  hands  are  set  free  to  serve  others. 
We  escape  from  ourselves,  our  introspection, 
our  culture  of  immortality.  We  escape  our 
anxious  self-concern.  So  little  is  Christian 
immortality  a  piece  of  egoism.  We  do  not 
see  the  prospect  as  a  field  for  imaginative  en- 

121 


THIS  LIFE  AND  THE  NEXT 

joyment,  nor  as  a  food  for  our  mere  com- 
fort. If  Christ  is  our  life  our  future  is  not 
our  own.  Our  ruling  passion  is  not  greed 
of  life.  We  do  not  do  just  what  we  must 
do  to  keep  death  at  bay.  We  begin  living 
the  eternal  life  here,  with  its  endless  selfless 
energy,  vaster  than  we  feel,  and  surer  than 
we  know.  That  life  is  not  a  mere  spiritual- 
ity but  a  sanctity;  for  we  are  not  mystic  be- 
ings in  our  destiny,  but  moral  and  holy.  So 
to  live  is  the  life  of  faith  —  which  is  not  an- 
other piece  of  work,  but  the  new  life  which 
is  the  source  of  all  work,  and  which  has  for 
its  ventures  all  the  capital  of  Christ's  hfe  be- 
hind it. 

The  other  life  Is  not  the  negation  and  ar- 
rest of  this.  Nor  is  it  mere  restitution  — 
as  if  we  might  then  pursue  all  the  old  egoist 
dreams  and  appetites  only  with  better  ma- 
chinery than  here.  That  were  pagan,  Mos- 
lem. It  were  at  best  but  happiness.  And 
the  Christian  idea  is  not  happiness  and  it  is 
not  power,  but  it  is  perfection  —  which  is  the 
growth  of  God's  image  and  glory  as  our  des- 
tiny. 


THE    END 

PRINTED    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES    OF    AMERICA 

122 


'HE  following  pages  contain  advertisements  of  a  few 
of  the  Macmillan  books  on  kindred  subjects. 


Religion,  Its  Prophets 
and  False  Prophets 


By  JAMES  BISHOP  THOMAS,  Ph.  D. 

Professor  in  the  Theological  Department  of  the 

University  of  the  South. 

The  object  of  this  book,  as  its  title  suggests,  is  a  study 
of  the  historic  conflict  between  the  two  types  of  religion, 
which  may  be  designated  as  the  prophetic  and  the  ex- 
ploiting t>'pe.  It  further  seeks  to  ascertain  the  theo- 
logical aspects  and  implications  of  the  contest,  to  do 
justice  to  the  theological  permanence,  veracity  and 
breadth  of  vision  of  prophetism  and  to  show  how  the 
theologies  or  hierarchies  and  ecclesiasticism  were  in- 
fluenced or  manipulated  in  the  interests  of  the  will  to 
exploit.  Again  it  may  be  said  that  the  author  seeks 
in  this  volume  to  discover  and  state  just  what  Christian- 
ity is.  In  order  to  do  this  he  distinguishes  between 
historic  Christianity  and  the  Christianity  of  its  founder. 
His  conclusion  is  that  "The  world's  greatest  need  as 
in  the  past  so  today,  is  to  understand  and  follow  the 
Christianity  of  Christ." 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

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A  Theology  for  the 
Social  Gospel 


By  WALTER  RAUSCHENBUSCH 

Author  of  "  Christianity  and  the  Social  Crisis  "  and 
"  Christianizing  the  Social  Order  " 

Cloth,  i2mo,  $1.50 

This  book,  which  embodies  the  Taylor  Lectures  given 
at  Yale  during  Convocation  Week  in  April,  1917,  takes 
up  the  old  doctrines  of  the  Christian  faith,  such  as 
Original  Sin,  The  Atonement,  Inspiration,  The  Sacra- 
ments, and  shows  how  they  can  be  re-interpreted  from 
a  modern  social  point  of  view  and  expanded  in  their 
scope  so  that  they  will  make  room  for  the  salvation  of 
society  as  well  as  for  the  salvation  of  individuals.  The 
work  is  practical  and  inspiring  and  covers  ground  not 
previously  traversed  by  writers. 


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Jewish  Theology:  Systematically 
and  Historically  Considered 

By  dr.  KAUFMANN  KOHLER 
President  of  Hebrew  Union  College 

$2.50 

This  is  the  first  complete  systematic  presentation  of 
Jewish  Theology  to  appear  in  English;  the  work  of  a 
scholar  of  international  reputation,  now  president  of  the 
Hebrew  Union  College.  Its  five  hundred  pages  give  a 
detailed  yet  popular  exposition  of  the  belief  of  Judaism. 
It  will  serve  both  as  a  text-book  for  students  and  as  a 
general  source  of  enlightenment  for  Jewish  and  Chris- 
tian readers. 

Dr.  Kohler  divides  his  text  into  three  main  parts: 
Part  I,  God;  in  which  God  As  He  Makes  Himself 
Known  to  Man,  The  Idea  of  God  in  Judaism  and  God 
in  Relation  to  the  World,  are  taken  up;  Part  II,  Man; 
and  Part  III,  Israel  and  The  Kingdom  of  God. 


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The  Bible  at  a 
Single  View 


With  an  Appendix  on  How  to  Read  the  Bible 

By  RICHARD  G.  MOULTON 
Editor  of   "The   Modern  Reader's  Bible" 

Cloth,  i2mo. 

Dr.  Moulton's  purpose  in  this  book  is,  as  indicated 
in  his  title,  to  present  a  concise  view  of  the  Bible,  a 
view  which  shall  make  clear  its  general  character  and 
content  and  prepare  the  reader  for  more  detailed  study 
afterward.  Dr.  Moulton's  training  and  research  —  he 
is  the  author  of  many  books  bearing  on  the  Bible  and 
the  editor  of  "The  Modern  Reader's  Bible"— well  fit 
him  for  the  task  which  he  has  chosen.  This  presenta- 
tion of  the  broad  outlines  of  the  Bible  cannot  but  lead 
to  a  more  general  and  clearer  appreciation  of  the  con- 
tent and  real  spirit  of  "  the  greatest  book  in  the  world." 
The  appendix  offers  a  course  in  Bible  reading  calculated 
to  conserve  time  and  energy  and  to  bring  better  results 
than  disorganized  Bible  reading. 


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Date  Due 


i.6  0 


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